The tears come quickly in Will & Harper — and that’s from just watching the trailer.
In their moving new documentary Will & Harper, comedian Will Ferrell joins his close friend Harper Steele on a cross-country road trip, realizing revelations about their long friendship and Harper’s transition to “this new version of yourself,” in the comedian’s heartfelt words.
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The road trip is a two-hander, in Hollywood’s nomenclature. Josh Greenbaum directed the pic, which comes out on September 27 on Netflix.
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The pair met on the day Ferrell was hired onto Saturday Night Live, where Steele was head writer on the show. A long and close friendship blossomed.
Ferrell says, one day, he received an email from his old friend.
“‘Hey Will, something I need you to know. I’ll be transitioning to live as a woman.’”
“It was just, whoa,” Ferrell said in response to the news.
“I don’t doubt that Will is my friend, but I’m not Andrew Steele anymore,” Harper shares in the film.
“We’d go to Lakers games, go on road trips together, surprise each other at random little bars in costume,” Ferrell told Netflix. It was the Anchorman’s idea to capture this chapter of their friendship in a documentary.
“What if we went on a road trip together, giving her a chance to go into a cowboy bar or whatever places she misses, and I can be by her side and lend support as a friend?” Ferrell thought. “At the same time, it would give us a chance to reconnect, and figure out what this transition means to our relationship.”
Steele said, “I didn’t just want to come out in places like New York or LA and forever live on either coast. I love the whole country. It’s my country, and I wanted to feel a little safer being in it. And I thought that going across the country with Will Ferrell would help me. That’s the privilege I have knowing Will Ferrell.”
Reviews have been rapturous.
“What Will & Harper is, at its heart, is a portrait of a friendship and how the fundamentals of a deep and lasting bond doesn’t change even when the people within it do. That alone makes it worth the trip,” wrote David Fear for Rolling Stone.
“Emotional, funny, and charged with a sense of vulnerability, Will & Harper is a beautiful thing,” said Tomris Laffley at Harper’s Bazaar.
And Richard Lawson at Vanity wrote, “The film’s greatest strength is the way it grants access to a topic many are deliberately ignorant about. Ideally, Will & Harper will invite in the people who most need to hear Steele’s testimony.”
