In my ideal America, Will Ferrell would take every newly out transgender person on a road trip. For now, though, only Harper Steele gets that honour. In Will & Harper, a new documentary from Netflix that follows the duo on a 16-day cross-country odyssey in a station wagon, the former SNL head writer’s decades-long friendship with Ferrell takes the front seat.
The official trailer, released Thursday, offers a tear-jerking first look at the pair’s many misadventures, which appear to include watching dirt track racing, doing cannonballs in a motel pool, and hanging out with Tina Fey.
The impetus for the project, as Ferrell explains in the trailer, was receiving an email from Steele in 2021 explaining that she would be “transitioning to live as a woman”. After receiving that message, Ferrell says he reached out to her, asking, “Harper, would you want to do a road trip as this new version of yourself, and at the same time figure out what this all means to us?”
The result is a movie that has earned fantastic early reviews, along with multiple standing ovations at its Sundance premiere earlier this year. Even judging from the tiny peek at the film offered in the trailer, it’s easy to see why. We get to see Ferrell correcting a bar patron who misgenders Steele, lots of hugs, and a particularly affecting shot of the pair crying together in the car.
Not everyone is best friends with the guy who went streaking in Old School, but many are indeed re-familiarising themselves with trans loved ones who have recently come out, which makes Will & Harper relatable viewing.
The fact that it was filmed all over the United States only adds to the wider appeal. “I didn’t just want to come out in places like New York or LA and forever live on either coast,” Steele told Netflix’s editorial site Tudum. “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.”
Steele wrote on SNL from 1995 to 2008, serving as a co-head writer for the last four years of her tenure. She has also written multiple Ferrell projects, including the Lifetime parody film A Deadly Adoption and the 2020 Netflix musical comedy Eurovision Song Contest.
Will & Harper will stream on Netflix 27 September.
This article originally appeared on THEM.
