Comedy writer Harper Steele and comedian Will Ferrell have been friends ever since they began working together on Saturday Night Live nearly 30 years ago. During the pandemic, Steele took Ferrell by surprise when she sent him an email telling him that she was transitioning.
Steele, who rose to become head writer on SNL, has always enjoyed driving across the country, stopping off at diners and dive bars and meeting locals along the way. As an openly trans woman, that freedom to roam from state to state now feels threatened and she does not know how she will be received in those very same spaces. As she puts it, she loves her country but she doesn’t know if it loves her back.
This spurs Will and Harper to take a Pringles-fueled road trip together from New York to California to reestablish their friendship after Harper’s coming out and for her to reconnect with the country as her authentic self. Thankfully director Josh Greenbaum (Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar) and his cameras were there to capture their journey.
For viewers coming to this who believe they have never encountered any trans people, Will & Harper offers the chance to get to know Harper the individual as she tells Will that he can ask her anything he wants to know. Initially, he’s cautious about what he asks and how he phrases it. “There’s no ground rules between friends”, she reassures him, quickly allaying his fear that he might say the wrong thing. Is she a worse driver as a woman? Ferrell cheekily enquires at one point. It’s an exchange that sums up the closeness of their friendship, and the irreverent tone of the film that is filled with laugh-out-loud moments. And yes, trans people can take a joke—if it’s funny—and tell them too.
This is a simple yet immensely powerful film in its centering of a trans woman, allowing her to tell her personal story on her own terms in her own words in a casual and natural setting. In an ideal world, trans people should not need to be “humanized” or “demystified”, but in 2024 America (and many other parts of the world), sadly we know that’s not the case. Ignorance and misinformation persists, even in unexpected places. Not that long ago, a therapist who Harper was seeing tried to dissuade her from transitioning.
Although we might be introduced to Harper partially through her transness, as we get to know her throughout the film it becomes about Harper the person, in all her fullness, and not about her being defined by her identity. This tenderly-crafted portrait of Harper, the strong bond she has with her friend, and her encounters as she navigates the country is one that is urgently needed and it is significant that it will be made all the more visible by its availability to audiences globally on Netflix. It’s an unassuming, delightfully mellow, and warmly inviting film that has the potential to open people’s minds and hearts.
Greenbaum deftly and succinctly contextualizes their road trip, acknowledging the wave of legislative attacks on LGBTQ rights largely focused on trans lives (the ACLU is currently tracking 530 anti-LGBTQ bills) that is occurring in many of the states that they are visiting. This includes Harper’s home state of Iowa, where 37 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced. She is acutely aware that having a much-loved cis movie star accompany her on the road has emboldened her to go to places that she might otherwise avoid and to feeling protected to some degree by his star power, and being followed by a camera crew.
Outside of their work on SNL, Will and Harper’s friendship was forged by going to basketball games, so they decide to take one in together. With courtside seats at an Indiana Pacers home game the pair immediately attracts attention, including that of Indiana’s Governor, Eric Holcomb, who signed a bill banning all gender-affirming care for minors last year. This leads to an awkward encounter with the man, particularly in hindsight when Harper realizes who she met. Ferrell admits that it feels different being under the spotlight with Harper by his side, most noticeably when they have dinner together at a packed steakhouse in Texas. As they eat their steaks, the glare of the public and their cellphones turns palpably hostile and results in a firestorm of transphobic hate on social media directed at both of them.
When they reach Oklahoma, Harper decides to go into a roadside bar alone to test the waters, observing that just being herself can make her feel unwelcome. It is an unnerving space, decorated in Confederate and Trump flags, but before long she is welcomed with a musical performance by two Native American men and the conversation flows relatively easily around the bar about her Iowa upbringing and life in New York. Although she is misgendered, it does not feel like there is any malice behind it. Later, at a kart racetrack in Oklahoma, a local encourages her to go wherever she wants to if she enjoys being there.
In fact, as she reacquaints herself with America, Harper encounters many people along the way with a live-and-let-live outlook who appear unfazed by her transness and accepting of her as a person. This causes her to reflect on whether her own fear of her fellow Americans might partly be the result of some residual internalized transphobia. Although hatred and ignorance towards trans people is an ever-present current, the focus—both the film’s and Harper’s—is on the joy that embracing her transness has brought her. It is touching to see her hear the experiences of other trans folks, like Dana Garber in Illinois, who describes knowing she was trans since she started kindergarten and offers her take that “a lot of transitioning is learning to love yourself”.
Key to the success of the film is Will and Harper’s heartwarming rapport and the affection that they share for one another; so naturally funny together, it is a pleasure to be in their company. Well-paced and structured, editor Monique Zavistovski discovers moments when Will and Harper are particularly vulnerable with one another and we can see their friendship deepen before our eyes as they share their inner lives. This sees the film go to some dark and emotional places, but it is always buoyed by the love between these two friends.
Steele is disarmingly funny and endearing, as well as candid and articulate about her experiences as she offers Will, and us, an intimate insight into her thoughts before she transitioned. She reads extracts from her journal, sharing that there were times when she considered ending her own life and, movingly, describes the gender euphoria she now feels; from “the moment I transitioned all I want to do is live”.
As much as this is a document of a friendship, it also feels like a search for contemporary America. Director of photography Zoë White (who has shot episodes of Westworld and The Handmaid’s Tale) gives the film a gorgeously cinematic look that moves from an epic scale as it captures the natural beauty of the country in all its vastness and variety, to tight, immediate closeups of Will and Harper. For all our differences and the divisive rhetoric that has dominated the national conversation over the last decade, Will & Harper is a reminder of what can happen when we start to break down our prejudices and preconceptions and talk to one another, resulting in an unexpected love letter to America and the promise of what it can be.
Like any memorable road trip there is a fantastic playlist. The soundtrack features the likes of First Aid Kit’s dreamy cover of “America” and an evocative score by Nathan Halpern that never manipulates. It is topped off by the hilarious and poignant (just like the film itself) original song that Will and Harper ask their friend Kristen Wiig to write and sing for them for the end credits, “Harper and Will Go West”. We need to see Wiig performing this at the Oscars. Look out for fun appearances from a raft of other SNL stars including Tina Fey, Will Forte, and Molly Shannon along the way.
At its heart, this is a deeply moving tribute to friendship and to living our truths that just goes to show that if you are fortunate enough to have a true friend and laughter in your life you can’t go too far wrong. I savoured every beautiful moment of it. As we share Will and Harper’s life-affirming, joy-filled ride to look for America, my hope is for every LGBTQ+ person to have a friend like Will in their lives, a great model of how to be a demonstrable ally just by being there, being open, and really listening.
Will & Harper, which received its International Premiere at the 49th Toronto International Film Festival, following festival premieres at Sundance and Telluride, opens in select theaters on Friday, September 13th and launches on Netflix on September 27th, 2024.
