Jonathan Bailey reveals the deeper meaning to his explicit scenes with Matt Bomer in ‘Fellow Travelers’

I do think there’s something about gay men and women coming together, or gay people, it’s the experience of what it is to see these sexual acts on screen is so important because, yes it’s provocative and yes people will talk about it, but then what?

It’s actually showing the level of the sort of chemical supernova of what it is in that environment [during the Lavender Scare] to come together and to achieve what most people would be able to have without question, a level of intimacy and validation and soothing in that sexual act. 

Historically, you know gay men, I think, have had a really bad time of being written off as being animalistic in the way that they meet and have sex with each other, but I’m hoping the show will allow people to understand that these cottaging and the toilet, they’re the only places that they could go to meet these people. 

And actually everyone should be able to have sex with the people that they want to, obviously within consent, and so that to me feels like why it’s so important to then give the audience an experience which is similar to what Skippy [Bailey’s character] experiences, which is this overwhelming, shocking, hopefully euphoric explosion. That’s why I think it’s a critical exploration.
Jonathan Bailey speaking to ‘The Jess Cagle Show‘ on why showing the frank sex scenes between his and Matt Bomer‘s characters in ‘Fellow Travelers’ was not gratuitous and quite vital to the story.