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The Grace of Will & Harper

The new documentary featuring Will Ferrell and his longtime friend Harper Steele comes at the right moment

Robert Stribley
3 min readSep 22, 2024
Will Ferrell and Harper Steele on their road trip — Netflix

My wife, sister, and I just enjoyed watching the new documentary Will & Harper the Alamo Drafthouse in Brooklyn.

If you’re not familiar with the premise of this documentary, it’s about Will Ferrell and his longtime friend Harper Steele, who wrote for him on Saturday Night Live and several other movies and projects. Harper began transitioning during the pandemic and this documentary depicts Will and Harper’s cross-country trip together from New York State to California with them stopping in at various places along the way, so that Harper can experience what it’s like to be a trans woman now, while dropping into some of the places she used to enjoy visiting.

Of course, this documentary comes at a moment when misinformation and outright hatred towards transgender people is being weaponized across the country — quite literally to scare up votes at the state and federal level. Will & Harper doesn’t spend a lot of time discrediting particular pieces of misinformation (you can find that sort of helpful content elsewhere). It simply depicts a friendship and how one friend reacts to the other’s transitioning, whether by asking questions to seek greater understanding or by providing…

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Robert Stribley
Robert Stribley

Written by Robert Stribley

Writer. Photographer. UXer. Creative Director. Interests: immigration, privacy, human rights, design. UX: Technique. Teach: SVA. Aussie/American. He/him.

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