In Jonathan Bailey’s new show Fellow Travelers the 35-year-old Brit plays Tim Laughlin, an idealistic young American who is trying to find his place in politics and the world as a gay man in the 1950s-1980s.
While the show has a lot of queer love and joy, it also has its fair share of homophobia and bigotry. And that’s something that Bailey is familiar with in real life, as shown by a recent incident where his life was threatened for being gay.
Bailey told The Standard that the event took place the morning after he went to an event for the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, DC.
“I went into a coffee shop, and I was wearing a Human Rights Campaign cap from the night before. And the young lady who I was ordering from recognised me from Bridgerton, we were just chatting,” Bailey said. “And a man arrived behind me and he said, ‘Are you famous?’ And I said something like, 'I'm really famous for ordering coffee,' which is actually quite an annoying thing to say.”
But the stranger didn’t take kindly to Bailey’s joke.
“And then he got my cap, and he pulled it off my head and he threw it across the room and he said, ‘get out of this f***ing coffee shop, you queer.”
When Bailey went to go get his hat from the ground and put it back on his head, the man threatened him, saying, “If you don’t take that cap off, I’m gonna f***ing shoot you. Where I’m from, people like me kill people like you.”
Bailey recalled that it felt like “everything slows down” when the threat happened, but he was saved thanks to a quick-acting woman who was there in the coffee shop.
“No one knew what to do, apart from one girl, she was amazing. Angela, she came up, and she got her phone out and she said, ‘I'm recording this message, I think you are welcome in this country. And what you're saying, I think, is appalling.’ That happened sort of five minutes in, and he left.”
“My life was threatened. My body believed it; my brain didn't and it took me a while to really catch up with it. But I've got friends and security,” Bailey continued. “There are so many people that don't. They are surrounded by that every day, and the torment of what that must be like, the amount of fear that was generated... If that's what children are surrounded by, they're not going to be able to grow in any way.”
He told The Standard that meeting a man like that made him remember that “potentially there's a kid who – that’s his father. That’s his uncle. That’s his teacher.”
“And of course, that's not just an American story,” he added. “It's international. And it's terrifying, that [in the UK] we're not looking after queer people, in terms of allowing them into the country. Because that is the reality; people’s lives are literally at risk.”
He also mentioned how Fellow Travelers is helping people see the stories of people who couldn’t come out in a new way.
“People are still living in the closet. Or they’ve had a moment where they're watching and they realize, that was their father's story, or their mother's story; or it’s people who have been affected by this, but for the first time are understanding the trauma,” he said.
“People are so shocked that this is such recent history, but the majority of people in the world are living under that sort of belief system,” he added. “And people on Instagram message from areas in the world where just getting through the day without being outed is survival.”
Fellow Travelers is currently airing on Showtime and Paramount+.