From His Oscar-Nominated ‘Philadelphia’ Screenplay To His Memoir & Acclaimed Series ‘Fellow Travelers’, Ron Nyswaner Has A Lot To Say – Behind The Lens

This week beginning May 30, Amazon will be selling Ron Nyswaner’s 2004 book Blue Days, Black Nights: A Memoir of Desire, a deeply personal look at the journey of its author who continues to be a leading voice in movies and television with a rich and varied filmography that has taken him from screenwriter to director to creator to producer and showrunner. Nyswaner joins me this week for this episode of my Deadline video series Behind the Lens.

His most current project is Showtime/Paramount+’s limited series Fellow Travelers. Adapted from the book by Thomas Mallon, it follows the relationship of Hawkins Fuller (Matt Bomer) and Tim Laughlin (Jonathan Bailey) on an emotional, rocky and heartbreaking trip from the McCarthy hearings and Lavender Scare of the ’50s in Washington, D.C. up to the AIDS crisis and tragedy of the ’80s. Nyswaner serves as executive producer, creator, writer and showrunner of the series that has been compared to The Way We Were — or, as Bomer told me, “the gay we were,” a reference to the love story of these two men during eras when it was often difficult to be your true self or risk your career and everything else.

Nyswaner won an Academy Award nomination for his screenplay for 1993’s Philadelphia, which won Tom Hanks a Best Actor Oscar. His other screenplays over the past four decades have included Smithereens, Swing Shift, Mrs. Soffel, Gross Anatomy, Love Hurts, Prince of Pennsylvania (which he also directed), The Painted Veil and more recently My Policeman. His work in television included such lauded series as Ray Donovan and Homeland.

He has much to say about what drives him as a writer and filmmaker, and you can watch our conversation and go “behind the lens” with Ron Nyswaner by clicking the link above.

Join me every Monday and Friday during Emmy season for another edition of Behind the Lens.