More sex on TV the merrier

Oscar-nominated screenwriter Ron Nyswaner said it’s no coincidence that, in his new Showtime series “Fellow Travelers,” lead actors Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey are both gay — just like their on-screen characters. 

“That was important to us to try to achieve [LGBTQ+ actors playing LGBTQ+ characters],” Nyswaner, 67, told The Post. 

“But, we weren’t going to achieve it at the cost of having someone who wasn’t great in their role,” he said. “Because people are more comfortable now being out of the closet, there are more actors to choose from. And, we were able to meet both of those things: we found the perfect actors, and they’re [from the LBGTQ+ community]. I’m proud of that.”

Now streaming on Paramount+ with Showtime (and premiering Oct. 29 at 9 p.m. on Showtime), “Fellow Travelers” was created by Nyswaner and is a love story/ political drama based on a novel by Thomas Mallon. 

The series arc follows the clandestine romance of two different men who meet in McCarthy-era Washington: confident and charismatic Hawkins Fuller (Bomer) and idealistic and religious Tim Laughlin (Jonathan Bailey, “Bridgerton”). 

The plot traces their on-and-off relationship through several decades, including the era when Sen. Joseph McCarthy (Chris Bauer) and Roy Cohn (Will Brill) declared war on “subversives and sexual deviants”; the Vietnam War protests of the ’60s; and the AIDS crisis of the ’80s, when Hawk is married to Lucy (Allison Williams). 

“[Reading the book], I fell in love with the central relationship between Hawk and Timothy,” said Nyswaner, who was nominated for an Oscar (“Philadelphia,” starring Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington) and wrote for/executive-produced Showtime’s “Homeland” and  “Ray Donovan.”

“They see the world differently, move through the world differently, have different values, but are drawn to each other,” he said. “Each gives something to the other — Hawk gives Tim a bit of his confidence and Tim opens up Hawk’s heart and emotions just a little bit.” 

“I can step back now and look at ‘Philadelphia’ and ‘Fellow Travelers,’ and see parallels,” he said. “But the world is very different. We can go further with sex than we could 30 years ago.”

Recently, thanks to a new study proclaiming that Gen Z prefers chaste media, there’s been hand-wringing about how much sex should be on TV.

“As much [sex] on television as possible, as far as I’m concerned,” Nyswaner said. 

“In the book, the sex between Hawk and Tim is very important. When I came out of the closet in [the late ’70s] and went from hiding who I was, to having these powerful connections with men, it was such a liberating, joyful experience,” said Nyswaner. “In our show, that’s a place of joy for them. Yes, you step outside and you could be arrested, your life could be ruined … but we wanted to show the way people  really have sex, which is not always with romantic music playing. Oscar Wilde famously said sex is about power. That’s how we looked at it. 

“The actors were able to embrace that and see that the story would not be completely told if the sex scenes were pulled out,” he said. “So it wasn’t like ‘Hey, every 20 minutes, let’s show some beautiful people with their clothes off!’ They knew that the sex scenes were treated like all the scenes in the show: as being essential to telling the story.”

Nyswaner also said that the music in “Fellow Travelers” is important.

“When every episode ends, when we fade to black for the credits, you’ll hear a song by somebody who died of AIDS,” he said. “We have Freddie Mercury, Michael Callen, Arthur Russell, Steven Grossman …We honor that gay history.”