Matt Bomer Brings Lavender Scare-Set Miniseries to Showtime

Out star Matt Bomer ("Magic Mike," "The Normal Heart," "American Horror Story") will star in and executive produce "Fellow Travelers," an eight-episode limited series for Showtime. The series is about two civil servants in love during the anti-gay government purge of the "Lavender Scare," according to Deadline.

"Bomer will play handsome, charismatic Hawkins Fuller, who maintains a financially rewarding, behind-the scenes career in politics," Deadline detailed. Hawkins and a young congressional staffer named Tim Laughlin "begin a romance just as Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn declare war on 'subversives and sexual deviants,' initiating one of the darkest periods in 20th-century American history." The story follows the two over the course of four decades as a half-century of American history unfolds in the background.

The series is based on the 2007 novel of the same name by openly gay writer Thomas Mallon. The novel is also the basis of a 2016 opera composed by Gregory Spears, with a libretto by Greg Pierce.

In addition to starring and being executive produced by Bomer, the series will be "created and exec produced by Ron Nyswaner, the Oscar nominated writer of 'Philadelphia' who also served as a co-exec producer on Showtime's 'Ray Donovan' and an EP on 'Homeland,'" Deadline noted.

The series still has more LGBTQ+-related content DNA, Deadline said. "Daniel Minahan, who has directed 'Halston' and 'American Crime Story: Versace,' will executive produce and direct the first two episodes," the report noted. Also, Robbie Rogers – Greg Berlanti's husband, former soccer player, and producer of "All American" – will executive produce the project.