After debuting to a warm reception at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and making the rounds at multiple fall film festivals including TIFF, Will Ferrell and collaborator Harper Steele’s road-trip documentary, “Will & Harper,” is finally available to stream on Netflix. The film, which follows Ferrell and his friend traveling across America while coming to understand Steele’s physical and spiritual transition into womanhood along the way, is being released at the height of an election season that sees two candidates who are diametrically opposed on issues relating to LGBTQ rights. Despite this timing, in a recent interview with The Independent, Ferrell explained how the efforts of this project go beyond politics.
“There is hatred out there,” he said. “It’s very real and it’s very unsafe for trans people in certain situations. But I don’t know why trans people are meant to be threatening to me as a cis male. 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.”
The director behind “Will & Harper,” Josh Greenbaum (“Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar,” “Strays”), shares Ferrell’s sentiments, and despite trying to make a “very pure, simple story of two friends,” also went in knowing that the film would be “received as a political film.” As a matter of fact, in many ways, Greenbaum was counting on it.
“It’d be disingenuous not to point out that we were aware of the reach that Will Ferrell has,” Greenbaum said. “The fanbase he has crosses all spectrums, but it also has a very traditionally straight, cis-male, bro-y [element]. On some level, for sure, we want to reach that audience. But it was very important to me, and to Harper, that we were also representing the queer community.”
For Steele, her plan was perhaps the most selfish, but also the most personal element of the project and the most freeing. She said to The Independent, “We just wanted to address what it’s like for two people who are friends– what all of this means to us, and to our friendship moving forward. I needed him to see the joy I was experiencing. And I also wanted to demonstrate to my friend here that I was still funny. And probably funnier than him.”
“Will & Harper” is available to stream on Netflix.
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