'Fellow Travelers' Screenwriter Ron Nyswaner Opens Up about the Show's Sex, Nudity, Authentic History, and More

Screenwriter Ron Nyswaner ("Philadelphia," "My Policeman") adapted the Thomas Mallon novel "Fellow Travelers" into an eight-episode Showtime series starring Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey as two gay men, civil servants who meet in the 1950s – a time when LGBTQ+ government employees were the subject of a ruthless crusade designed to out them, fire them, and ruin their lives.

From expanding the story's sweep beyond the novel and into the AIDS era to ensuring that the words spoken by the drama's true-life characters were truly spoken, Nyswaner – who also served as the show's creator – explained in a recent interview how the show gets history right, and the importance of the hot sex scenes shared by its fictional gay protagonists, Hawk (Bomer) and Tim (Bailey).

The show's publicity images and trailer were not shy about making it clear that the show would include realistic sexual relationships, and the series keeps that promise: From cruisy glances to cottaging in public restrooms to a torrid, decades-long affair with BDSM overtones, the show sizzles, and Nyswaner was anything but distressed that the steamy aspect of the series has commanded too much attention.

"I love that we're talking about the sex in the show," the screenwriter told Digital Spy. "Like everything in 'Fellow Travelers,' it was carefully designed. There's not much in our show that is accidental. It was carefully designed because we wanted to do a love story that is based in power."

To explain that, Nyswaner added: "Oscar Wilde said: 'Everything in life is about sex except for sex. Sex is about power.' Every scene in the show is a negotiation of some kind, but especially the sex scenes are about the exchange of power."

If the history of human affairs is about anything, it's about power – and, by implication, sex.

"Thomas Mallon is a great novelist, but he's also a great historian," Nyswaner noted. "This book led me to dive into research on the Lavender Scare, which I didn't really know existed."

"Everyone who I know knows about Joe McCarthy and the anti-Communist purge," Nyswaner added. "But Roy [Cohn] and McCarthy also led the purge of homosexuals."

And the purge was no "Don't Ask Don't Tell"-style prohibition: It was a full-on inquisition.

"Thousands of people were fired, far more than people who were suspected communists, and often their families were notified: 'Your son or daughter is being investigated as a sexual deviant,'" Nyswaner recounted.

The series contains several scenes of closeted federal employees being grilled, and one secret lesbian couple who dare to share an apartment have their home raided and searched.

"Everything that you see in the show with the FBI coming into somebody's apartment, opening underwear drawers" is true to historical fact, Nyswaner said. "Every question the FBI asks? Those are all documented. That's a piece of our history that people should know."

If the show's sex scenes were carefully designed, so was the message behind its depictions of institutional brutality.

"It's very important for me to say this: These are dark times that we survived. That we fought back in. That's why we're making the show," Nyswaner emphasized. "We're not showing people being victimized by bad people. We're showing people who survived and fought back in both cases, and that's what's important about the show."

So enthusiastic was Nyswaner to tie the book into true history that he brought a greater focus onto McCarthy, Cohn, and the anti-LGBTQ+ purge of civil servants – and extended the book's story to the 1980s and the peak of the AIDS crisis.

"When I started reading about Roy Cohn and his obsession with David Schine" – a real person for whom Cohn secured special favors and privileges – "and how that basically led to the McCarthy hearings, which are about homophobia? To me, that is a part of LGBTQ history and American history that people need to know about. It fascinated me. So that was part of the expansion to go deeper into that," Nyswaner recounted.

"And then I just was obsessed with Hawk and Tim. I didn't want their story to end in the '50s. I wanted to keep living with them for three more episodes. So that was the motivation, to go to the the AIDS crisis in the '80s, and then what happened in between."

Asked about resurgent puritanicalism, Nyswaner expounded on the philosophy that, "Saying sex isn't necessary on screen would be like saying sex isn't important in life. That's not true of my life, and certainly not true of most people's lives that I know."

Adding that while he is sober now, "there was a period of my life where I did a lot of drugs and had a lot of sex with people that I probably shouldn't have been in a hotel room with," Nyswaner acknowledged that "desire can lead us to great places of celebration... but it also can lead us to some dark places. I think that's such a huge part of human life. Why should we not examine it?"

"Fellow Travelers" streams on Paramount+ with Showtime and on Showtime. Watch the trailer below.