Jelani Alladin (‘Fellow Travelers’): ‘You can’t teach love. You can only experience it’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
In playing the role of Marcus on the Showtime’s “Fellow Travelers,” Jelani Alladin had one specific goal in mind. He wanted the series, which examines queer life across the latter half of the 20th century, to reveal the experiences of queer men rather than try to teach a lesson. As he says in an exclusive chat with Gold Derby (watch the video interview above), “You can’t teach love. You can only experience.”
In “Fellow Travelers,” Alladin’s multifaceted Marcus is a journalist who desires to be taken seriously and presents as rather outwardly masculine, hesitating to refer to himself as gay because of the potential repercussions. Alladin says that Marcus’s duality is illustrative of society’s penchant for people identifying as just one thing. “We love labels in America,” he says. “I think sometimes we forget that the human experience is so vast and so wide that sometimes there are no labels. We are choosing how we want to present to this world and it may not have a definitive box.”
In the case of Marcus, Alladin says that the character’s evolution is a really a quest for finding himself and finding a community where he feels safe and loved. “Marcus represents a man unlike any that I’ve ever seen on television,” he argues. “He’s actually trying to heal the entire time. That’s something I’ve never seen on television, and I’m glad that I got to be the vessel for this characterization.”
Alladin has little interest in the talk around the show’s graphic sex scenes, arguing that similar attention isn’t given to depictions of sex between heterosexual couples. In the end the actor hopes that the show paves the way for further depictions of queer love without all the fanfare and attention. “Somebody’s got to be the first one,” he says. “Somebody’s got be the one to kind of push the envelope. And I think ‘Fellow Travelers’ has done that and I hope, going forward, it just creates ease for everything that comes after.”
Reflecting on the experience of making “Fellow Travelers,” Alladin jokes that he asked creator and showrunner Ron Nyswaner if he would be paying for Alladin’s therapy bills. However, the actor says the effort is ultimately worth it if the result impacts the right audience. “You just open up your heart and pour it out,” he says. “It all is meant to give voice and representation to somebody while watches this show who has never seen themselves on television before. I hope they feel like ‘Oh, that’s my life. That’s me. He did that.’ So I’m just very proud, as you can tell.”
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