Jonathan Bailey has gained quite the edge in the television industry in recent years with star-studded performances in prominent roles in some of the most beloved projects, including Bridgerton. Regardless, as he is from the gay community, Bailey has often had to suffer through homophobia of different kinds.
Just like the shockingly brutal treatment he received last year while visiting Washington DC to attend a charity gala. Despite his recent queer series Fellow Travelers being set in Washington DC in the 1950s, Bailey had to face much wrath and criticism at a random coffee run just because he belonged to the queer community — something that left him utterly terrified.
Jonathan Bailey had a terrifying experience of grabbing coffee in DC
Recently appearing on The Chris Evans Breakfast Show, Jonathan Bailey shared the story from 2023, when he was visiting Washington DC to attend a charity gala where his Fellow Travelers co-star Matt Bomer was presented with an award for his charity work.
Explaining how he felt “completely activated and galvanized” by everything and thought of it all to be vital, brilliant, important, and great, he shared how he went to a coffee shop to grab some coffee in that energized manner. But little did he know about the cruelty that awaited him. As he said:
“There was a guy behind me — an American guy — who obviously had seen that I was wearing a Human Rights Campaign cap from the night before that I’d been given. And he just said, ‘Get out of my country, you queer.’ And he took my hat, and he threw it across the room. I mean, it was really, obviously, incredibly distressing. He said, ‘You know, where I’m from, people like me kill people like you.'”
Continuing to tell the story, he let out that the guy was from Pennsylvania before realizing how common that experience was for other people from the queer community. Claiming that it is usually experienced as a “sort of microaggression” even in the West, Bailey said:
“But that was such an explicit act of terror. It sort of, obviously, rippled through me, but also the people who were in the coffee shop. It’s not just about the gay people who get hurt and wounded and told that they’re worth nothing in those moments, it’s the people who are witnessing it as well. It was so shocking that it galvanized the people in the coffee shop; we stayed and we talked for three hours.”
While it was indeed incredibly distressing for Bailey to have undergone such a traumatic experience, at the same time, he was also absolutely baffled by the woman who stepped in between them in his support.
Jonathan Bailey was baffled by the woman who stepped up in his support
Though he had even shot a television series on this very issue, Jonathan Bailey still felt truly confounded when a young woman stepped up in his support. As he continued to share the story on the Virgin Radio UK channel:
“There was an amazing woman called Angela, who was a young student, and she stepped in between us and got her phone out and she said, ‘I’m recording this. I don’t know you, [but] I do not stand by with what you’re saying. [Looks at Bailey] You are welcome in this country.'”
This “simple but very brave and courageous act” had Jonathan Bailey absolutely dumbfounded after the terrorizing act that preceded it. All in all, it further made him realize just how necessary it was for people from his community to make themselves known to stop such behavior.
