Will Ferrell Can Help You Understand Trans People

WILL FERRELL’S LATEST project shows a different side to the comic actor, and portrays him grappling with something far outside of his own lived experience: namely, what it’s like to live as a trans woman in America today.

The Elf and Anchorman star’s 27-year friendship with comedy writer Harper Steele is the subject of a new documentary, Will & Harper, now streaming on Netflix. Ferrell first met Steele while working on Saturday Night Live in 1995, and they have worked on multiple projects together since, including the musical comedy Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga.

In 2022, at the age of 61, Steele came out to Ferrell as a transgender woman. “Look, I’m not a very political person, but just by nature of being trans, I’m now a political person in a way,” she wrote in an email to the people in her life. “I just ask you as my friends to stand up for me. Do your best to, if I’m misgendered, just speak up on my behalf, that’s all I ask.”

Will & Harper follows Ferrell and Steele as they take a road trip across the country, and depicts Steele exploring whether she still feels welcome in certain spaces at a time when trans rights are under threat in the US, as well as she and Ferrell figuring out what about their bond, if anything, has changed following her transition.

In a recent interview with The Independent ahead of the film’s release, Ferrell shared what he learned while traveling with Steele and filmmaker Josh Greenbaum.

“We met a lot of people who were just… ‘You’re not a threat,'” he said. However, he took care to acknowledge that this is not the case for a great many trans people. “There is hatred out there,” he continued. “It’s very real and it’s very unsafe for trans people in certain situations.”

Ferrell went on to grapple with the question of why, exactly, trans people have become so freqently maligned a target in political discourse, and the source of that ill-feeling towards such a marginalized community.

“But I don’t know why trans people are meant to be threatening to me as a cis male,” he said. “I don’t know why Harper is threatening to me… It’s so strange to me, because Harper is finally… her. She’s finally who she was always meant to be. Whether or not you can ultimately wrap your head around that, why would you care if somebody’s happy? Why is that threatening to you? If the trans community is a threat to you, I think it stems from not being confident or safe with yourself.”