DAN WEBSTER:
Whenever the name Will Ferrell is mentioned, certain scenes come to mind. During his days as a Saturday Night Live cast member, those scenes might include his partnering as a cheerleader with Cheri Oteri, his impersonations of George W. Bush and baseball announcer Harry Caray and his banging away on a cowbell to please a record producer played by Christopher Walken.
In the movies, Ferrell has proved hilarious while appearing in such comedies as Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Blades of Glory and as the human who was raised as one of Santa’s helpers in the 2003 film Elf.
None of those characters are played by the actor who shows up in the Netflix documentary feature Will & Harper, which was directed by Josh Greenbaum. And there’s a good reason why.
It has to do with the Harper of the film’s title. In 1995, when Ferrell joined SNL as a new cast member, he quickly made friends with one of the show’s writers. Over the seasons, the two became close, and their teaming led to some of Ferrell’s greatest sketches, from his portraying the singer Robert Goulet to his impersonation of former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno.
Then in 2022 that writer—now known as Harper Steele—came out as transgender. She revealed as much to all her friends through email, including several of the SNL cast members, and she worried about their reactions.
Ferrell was concerned as well. Not that he couldn’t and wouldn’t empathize with his friend. But like many cisgender people, he wasn’t sure how to react—even, among other things, what language to use.
“I had met trans people, but I didn’t have anyone personally in my life,” Ferrell told a writer for Variety. “So this was all new territory for me, which is why I think this film is so exciting for us to kind of put out there in the world. It’s a chance all of us in the cis community to be able to ask questions and also just to listen and be there as a friend to discuss this journey.”
The journey he refers to is the one that he and Steele built the documentary around, the one they took across the country, from New York to California, stopping both in Steele’s hometown and in several of the down-home, truck-stop locations that Steele used to love hanging out in before her transition.
Along the way, captured by Greenbaum’s camera, the two balance their easy camaraderie—the kind that two people whose career path involves comedy would naturally gravitate to—with the more serious topic of how the trans community is treated, and often mistreated, in today’s America.
They meet with Dana Garber, a trans woman who is an activist in her Peoria, Illinois, community. So strong is the draw of a celebrity such as Ferrell that when they attend an Indiana Pacers NBA game, they by chance meet with Indiana’s Gov. Eric Holcomb, who has taken a strong anti-trans political stance. Steele, introduced and embraced by Ferrell, is essentially ignored.
And though the two are treated shabbily in other spots—a stop at an Amarillo, Texas, restaurant results in a number of online anti-trans rants against Steele and the “liberal," so to speak, Ferrell—one visit to a Meeker, Oklahoma, bar ends up being the kind of give-and-take that even those with polar-opposite views can adopt when civility is given a chance.
Anyone looking for a standard Ferrell gag-fest is likely to be disappointed with Will & Harper. But anyone looking to better understand the situation of someone such as Harper Steele, not to mention the often awkward attempts of her friends to figure out how to properly react to what to them is a new situation, might find the movie helpful.
One thing Steele herself stresses is that she has mixed feelings about some of the sketches—the Janet Reno one in particular—that she had a hand in writing. Still, she comes down on the side of comedy. In the same Variety article quoted above, Steele gave her own feelings on the topic.
“I am purple-haired woke,” she said, “but I wonder if sometimes we take away the joy of playing when we take away some of the range that performers, especially comedy performers, can do.”
For Spokane Public Radio, I’m Dan Webster.
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Movies 101 host Dan Webster is the senior film critic for Spokane Public Radio and a blogger for Spokesman.com.