Is ‘Fellow Travelers’ Based on a Real Story?: Fellow Travelers is a miniseries created by Ron Nyswaner, which is based on the 2007 book of the same name written by Thomas Mallon. The story follows Tim Laughlin and Hawkins Fuller government employees and their four decades-long romance between historical moments.
Their love started in the 1950s when the government was very harsh on Queer people. But is the Fellow Travelers story real? Does Fellow Travelers Character exist in real life? If you have these questions then you are in the right place.
Is ‘Fellow Travelers’ Based on Real People?
No, some Fellow Travelers characters aren’t real such as our main characters Hawkins Fuller and Tim Laughlin. Hawkins Fuller and Tim Laughlin are fictional characters and they aren’t based on anyone. The writer use those historical events and creates characters from it.
However, some characters in Fellow Travelers is based on real person such as Joseph R. McCarthy, Roy Cohn, and David Schine. These people are based on real-life people. Joseph R. McCarthy used to be a U.S senator in the 1950s, he was very harsh on queer people. His main motive was to find the soviet spy in the US government, but he sometimes used it to defame anyone.
Is the Fellow Travelers Story Real?
The story of Hawkins and Tim is completely fictional, but the historical events they go through is real. In the first episode, McCarthy issued the Executive Order which was to find Soviet spies in the government and also to find queer people in their department and fire them. This also happened in real life, McCarthy used this order to punish left-wing people who questioned the government.
Also Read: Fellow Travelers Episode 1: Recap And Ending Explained
He also used to target homosexual people and make him the scapegoat to run this propaganda of catching Soviet spy, and being in the power.
The first episode also tells us about Tim having AIDS in 1986. In the 1980s AIDS started spreading amongst queer people and African American. Which kills a lot of gay people, even Marcus said to Hawkins that he is tired of going to everyone’s funeral. Overall the show is truthful to it’s events and not try to over exaggerate it, while the story of the main character is getting affected by those historical events.
