Jonathan Bailey is one-half of the most-talked about gay couples on television—that would be as Tim Laughlin opposite Matt Bomer's Hawkins Fuller in the eight-part Paramount Plus series Fellow Travelers. But though Bailey & Co. have gotten great notice for the roles and the queer representation they offer, the actor relayed a harrowing story in which he experienced homophobic harassment while in Washington, D.C.
The seemingly perpetually busy actor—who is also part of the star-studded Wicked cast and will reprise the role of Regency-era heartthrob Anthony Bridgerton in Bridgerton Season 3—detailed the distressing encounter in a December profile in The Standard. Bailey told the outlet that he was in D.C. attending an annual event for the LGBTQ+ organization The Human Rights Campaign when the incident occurred:
I woke up the next morning, it was like a montage. Sunshine, I was like, this is brilliant. 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. 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. 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 fucking coffee shop, you queer.’
The actor described how the room went silent after the man's tirade, which he escalated after Bailey retrieved his hat and placed it back on his head:
If you don't take that cap off, I'm gonna fucking shoot you. Where I'm from, people like me kill people like you.
Though understandably shaken by the incident, Bailey praised the support of one of the cafe's customers, a woman named Angela, who recorded the encounter and dubbed the man's hate speech as "appalling."
In the moment, everything slows down. 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.
Bailey continued to say that, though his "body believed" that his life was being threatened in that moment, he knows he has support and security, advantages that many queer people are without in the face of anti-LGBTQ+ hate and violence.
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. 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.
The English actor, who met President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden at the Human Rights Campaign gala the night prior, said that experiences like his weren't "just an American story" but an "international" one:
And of course, that's not just an American story. It's international. And it's terrifying...because that is the reality; people’s lives are literally at risk.
However, the terrifying encounter isn't stopping how proud Bailey is of portraying gay characters onscreen as an openly gay performer, telling the outlet:
I still 100 per cent stand by the fact that I think all actors should be able to do everything. But to have gay actors chronicling the oppression and the trauma of it, I think it only adds to the experience. It's exciting that people welcome it.
You can currently catch Jonathan Bailey alongside Matt Bomer in Fellow Travelers, which dropped its finale on Friday, December 15 on Paramount Plus.
And in terms of those high-profile upcoming projects, the Wicked movie is one of the most-anticipated titles on the 2024 movie schedule, with Wicked: Part One scheduled to hit theaters on November 27, 2024. And Bailey's Anthony Bridgerton will be back making viewers swoon in Bridgerton Season 3 beginning May 16, 2024.
