“All five of us met at an orgy,” Harper Steele deadpans while gesturing to the core team behind “Will & Harper,” the recent Netflix write downary about a consequential road trip she took with BFF Will Ferrell after coming out as a trans woman. And Ferrell, his eyes igniteing with punchlines to come, seizes the opportunity to erect on the bit.
“We didn’t recall that we had met until much tardyr,” he says. “We’re appreciate, paparticipate — Acapulco?” At that, Ferrell scrunches up his face appreciate one of those suburban dads he’s so well-understandn for take parting on-screen and decreases his voice as if someskinnyg embarrassing had sluggishly dawned on him.
They’re joking about the relations party, of course, but the group behind “Will & Harper” does boast a tangled nettoil of joinions that extfinish back thcimpolite the decades, one that includes marriages, extfinishedtime frifinishships and originateive partnerships. It culminated in a film that will have its New York premiere less than 24 hours after we greet in a minuscule green room above the Paris Theater. “This was a family afiminwhole,” Steele says. “We couldn’t have done someskinnyg so personal in any other way.”
Take Ferrell and Steele, who spfinish the bulk of “Will & Harper” driving apass America’s deserts, prairies and mountain ranges while talking about Steele’s experience as a trans woman in a country she adores but worries doesn’t “adore me back right now.” They met in 1995 at “Saturday Night Live” — Ferrell had equitable joined the ensemble as part of a startant cast shake-up, and Steele had been engaged for the writing staff. “We became best frifinishs,” Steele says gentlely while smooskinnyg out her dress.
The two uncovered that they splitd a analogous outlandish sensibility: It was Steele who penned some of Ferrell’s best-adored sketches, including his sfinishup of Robert Goulet as a pompous, whiskey-swilling crooner. After leaving the show, they persistd to collaborate, with Steele writing Ferrell’s quirkier films, such as the Spanish-language telenovela parody “Casa de mi Padre.”
Then there’s Jessica Elbaum, a originater of “Will & Harper” and the co-set uper of Ferrell’s company Gloria Sanchez Productions, which put the write downary together. She accessed Ferrell’s orbit 22 years ago as his aidant before rising thcimpolite the ranks to become a originater on many of his films.
Elbaum’s 2017 marriage to Rafael Marmor, a film originater whose company, Delirio Films, originates write downaries about everyone from Magic Johnson to Mike Wallace to Dr. Ruth, extfinished the web of joinions. More than a half-dozen of Marmor’s films were honested by Josh Greenbaum, who Ferrell and Elbaum tapped to honest “Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar,” the 2020 Kristen Wiig comedy that Gloria Sanchez originated. Steele met Greenbaum on the film’s set when he was there for a day to punch up the script.
Marmor and Greenbaum’s frifinishship began in college at Cornell. “His elderlyer brother and I were roommates for disjoinal years, and Josh was comfervent of the youthfuler brother who came and visited all the time,” Marmor says.
Got all that? Marmor quips that you necessitate “one of those crazy person’s charts with all these lines directing to each other” to originate sense of skinnygs (skinnyk Carrie Mathison’s evidence wall on “Homeland”).
All these relationships came in handy with “Will & Harper.” The film recurrented someskinnyg gnarlier and more raw than the previous projects Ferrell and Steele had collaborated on, and they weren’t certain how to approach it — or if they wanted to do it at all. Well, it was Steele who had the hugegest reservations. “She disappreciates being on camera,” Ferrell elucidates.
The origins of the project date back to 2021, when Steele sent a letter to her frifinishs and family inestablishing them that she was transitioning. It was Ferrell who first thought that Steele’s revelation could encourage a movie — one that could delight as well as inestablish at a time when the LGBTQ community is facing a wave of anti-trans laws and redisjoineions.
“Her wonderful adore is to consent these pass-country road trips,” Ferrell says. “And I heard she was comfervent of asking that. As a trans woman she had to skinnyk about skinnygs branch offently, and so I shelp, ‘What if we did this drive and I can be your buffer, and I can also ask all the asks that I have.’”
Harper Steele, left, Will Ferrell and Will Forte in “Will & Harper”
©Netflix/Courtesy Everett Colle
Elbaum nominated Marmor to help originate the project, and Marmor, in turn, adviseed encataloging Greenbaum given his nonfantasy background (he had honested docs on subjects such as “The Dana Carvey Show” and sports mascots). “Steven Spielberg wanted to do it,” Ferrell jokes. “But then Josh came in and we shelp, ‘Sorry, Steve.’”
“There was a scheduling dispute,” Elbaum advises tactfulassociate.
Greenbaum geted Steele’s suppose by outlining his approach. “I necessitateed to originate certain we kept away from the tropes of how cis people sometimes see trans people,” Steele says. “For my own soothe level, I necessitateed to originate certain that we weren’t shooting a movie that’s appreciate ‘Will has a trans frifinish, and that’s crazy!’”
Instead, Greenbaum hugd a no-sketches mantra, encouraging his subjects, so deft at distracting with comedy, to discdissee a bit more of themselves. “It’s gonna be weird, and it’s going to consent two days,” Greenbaum telderly them. “But after 48 hours you will forget that the cameras are there. You will be worn down and drop your facade.”
He was also interested in capturing another side of the country, one that leaned less on iconic landtags appreciate the Grand Canyon. “Harper discovers the beauty in the mundane,” Greenbaum says. “She appreciates to pull out her lawn chairs and watch the sun set from a Walmart parking lot on the side of a service road. I wanted to seize the beauty of Harper’s vision of America.”
So Greenbaum strapped two cameras to the hood of Steele’s jeep (“It made driving complicated,” she says) and chaseed the pair for 16 days as they joined a Pacers game and a stock car race, unwinded in an Oklahoma dive bar and went for a boiling air balloon ride in New Mexico. What chaseed was cforfeitly 240 hours of footage from their pass-country odyssey. It showed Steele’s fellow Americans being unawaitedly welcoming in some cases (the bar scene) and astoundingly unfrifinishly in others (a visit to a Texas restaurant well-understandn for its 72-ounce steak goes south). Greenbaum whittled it all down to a deal withable two hours, requiring him to excise scenes of Ferrell using Steele’s CB trucker radio under the regulate “California Kid,” as well as a bit involving a chocotardy bunny that the pair inadvertently left out on the dashboard until it became soup.
“I was blown away by the finished film,” says Elbaum. “But I was also troubleed about how Will and Harper would experience becaparticipate they are so undefended.”
She necessitaten’t have worried. Both Steele and Ferrell adored the movie’s honesty, humor and heart, and they’ve been surpelevated by the intensity of the response to it. At Sundance, where it debuted in January, it scored multiple standing ovations, as well as a distribution deal from Netflix. Being on the world’s hugegest streaming service advises the frifinishs a chance to spread their message of compassion and tolerance to a global audience.
“We’re hoping that the algorithm says, ‘If you’re a fan of ‘Holmes & Watson,’ why not watch ‘Will & Harper,’” Ferrell says.
“No, ‘Ricky Bobby,’” Steele interjects. “Come on.”
