Photo Credit: ‘Fellow Travelers,’ Ben Mark Holzberg / SHOWTIME.
The only thing we like watching more than the sizzling on-screen chemistry between Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey on Fellow Travelers is the flirty bromance that’s blossomed between the two in real life.
Have you seen these two together? Oh, it’s just far too charming!
But, years before he and Bailey became besties, Bomer was paling around with another gay actor. As it turns out, in the 2000s, he split a one-bedroom New York City apartment with none other than Lee Pace.
Yes, that Lee Pace. The 6’5″ Thom Browne-sporting Internet Boyfriend whose every new Instagram post has the power to ruin our days (in a good way).
“I’ll tell you how long I’ve known Lee Pace,” Bomer tells GQ. “I’ve known him since he was shorter than me, when he was 14 and I was 15.”
Isn’t that sweet? These two A-List hunks have known each other since high school—Klein High School in the Houston suburb of Spring, TX, to be exact.
It warms our heart knowing that these guys found each other when they were just baby gays, and that they reconnected years later when their paths brought them both to NYC.
Oh, to be a fly on the wall of that apartment…
Matt Bomer and Lee Pace, circa 2011 | Image Credit: Getty Images
That’s just one of the many fun tidbits gleaned from Bomer and Bailey’s delightful cover story feature with GQ, which brought the Fellow Travelers co-stars together over drink’s in the historic West Village to discuss their sexy miniseries and more.
Something about being back in the longtime gay-borhood seems to have made Bomer extra nostalgic, because he waxes nostalgic about his career, which really took off in the late 2000s with White Collar, and became proof positive that openly gay actors could be leading men.
And while he admits it’s likely cost him work in the past, he has no regrets: “I choose just to never look back in anger about anything,” he shares. “Ultimately, my career is a lot richer because I decided to be open with who I am.”
Bailey certainly recognizes his co-star’s impact, and credits Bomer for paving the way for other gay men in Hollywood: “It’s a wave of progress that Matt’s been surfing and is at the front of. And it’s been a real honor to be able to get on my boogie board next to him.”
Elsewhere in the conversation, Bomer reflects on the role that almost was: Playing the late, great, closeted screen idol, Montgomery Clift, in a biopic that was going to be directed by Ira Sachs (the man behind this year’s excellent love triangle drama, Passages).
Though he says that ship has sadly sailed, he still has hope he’ll get to pay tribute to the legendary actor somehow, remarking that he’s roughly the same age Clift was when he tragically passed.
“I always thought it’d be really interesting to do a play about the last night of his life,” Bomer says, “when he’s watching one of his old movies on TV. And he had this man who lived with him and took care of him for the last chapter of his life. There’s an interesting play in there somewhere…. Maybe Liz Taylor swings by.”
From there, the actors remark on the ways the industry has changed and become much more inclusive for LGBTQ+ stories, going off on tangents about the dream gay roles they’d love to play.
Bomer shares a pitch for a Murder, She Wrote sequel series where he plays Jessica Fletcher’s queer grandson returning to Cabot Cove, while Bailey notes he’d love to work with All of Us Strangers director Andrew Haigh, sharing that his previous film Weekend informed his approach to sex scenes in Fellow Travelers.
The interview wraps up in hilarious fashion as the two joke about rounding up all the queer actors in Hollywood—including Pace!—for a movie about the Sacred Band Of Thebes.
“[They’re] an army of 300 gay lovers in [ancient] Greece,” says Bailey. “They partnered in pairs, this gay army, and they overthrew a Spartan army… I want to do that as a comedy.”
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