Will Ferrell is building up steam.

Sitting in the nondescript hotel conference room reserved for our interview – an environment that gives our conversation the atmosphere of “Between Two Ferns” – the actor has taken up and made the topic of transphobia in Hollywood films such as “Ace Ventura”. with Es.

“Entertainment culture has taught us to have the flippant attitude that trans people are not real people,” Ferrell says. “It’s silly. It’s an illusion. “Obviously we’re getting closer to educating everyone—”

“Are we?” His friend, former “Saturday Night Live” co-star and current road movie co-star Harper Steele interrupts him, hilariously interrupting. The sound of truth resonates in her expressionless expression.

This is the thought-provoking question of their new documentary Will & Harper, which follows the couple on a cross-country road trip as they reveal Steele’s coming out as a trans woman in 2022. Along the way, Ferrell and Steele meet Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb, a proponent of anti-trans legislation; connect with the trans community in Peoria, Illinois; suffer hateful trolling in Texas; and experience the unexpectedly warm embrace of Oklahoma bar patrons. As part of an absurd buddy comedy of idiots that brings you “SNL” skits like “Oops!” I Crapped My Pants” and “More Cowbell,” the film, which debuts on Netflix Friday, offers one of American pop culture’s most successful portraits to date of the contemporary trans experience — unafraid to “answer all the questions that you shouldn’t ask trans people.”

You could even call “Will & Harper” the transsexual “Will & Grace.”

“The impact that a sitcom like ‘Will & Grace’ has had on the queer community is enormous,” says the film’s director, Josh Greenbaum. “It’s certainly not what we would call high art, but it reflects a little bit of what we were aiming for with our film. I love the expression that laughter is the shortest distance between two people. I’m a big believer in that. “We’ve talked about making sure our film is fun, accessible and easy to get into.”

Like NBC’s groundbreaking sitcom – which was praised by then-Vice President Joe Biden for having “done more to educate the American public than almost anything anyone has ever done” but was criticized by some LGBTQ+ observers because She oversimplified queer identity for heterosexual viewers – is also this spoonful – The sugar-free approach works in both directions. For Steele, who admits she loves an “aggressive approach” when discussing trans rights, “‘normalization’ is a reductive word that puts queer people in their place. It makes me feel like the goal is gay marriage and not a generalization of liberation.”

Read more: We’ve been telling the wrong story about queer people in Hollywood

Will & Harper’s ability to walk the fine line between edifying and didactic, entertaining and superficial is woven into the fabric of the film, and the connection between the stars gradually deepens until they find themselves in the city of Trona Reaching the Mojave Desert where Steele lives. A shattering moment that reveals the depths of her former self-loathing. At every point it threatens to leave important stones unturned, to leave important connections unconsidered – and instead at every point it is directly confronted with the viewer’s skepticism.

Not that they planned it that way. Rejecting the early idea of ​​building the film around comedic elements, Ferrell, Steele and Greenbaum found themselves subject to the vagaries of non-fictional storytelling, stumbling into the journey’s most exciting scenes. They didn’t expect, for example, that a gag involving Ferrell attempting to eat a 72-ounce steak in less than an hour at a Texas steakhouse would expose him and Steele to uncomfortable stares from other diners and would subject himself to a subsequent barrage of abuse on social media. They also didn’t know that Holcomb would be at a Pacers game they attended in Indianapolis, where the governor and Ferrell were introduced courtside — leading to an on-camera reckoning from the actor about the fundamentals of effective allyship.

“If we were in a moment like this again, I wouldn’t hesitate to ask, ‘By the way, what are your views?’ ” says Ferrell. “Just because I’m okay with poking the bear a little bit more. Especially if I had a little knowledge. The waiter literally made a mistake at dinner last night (Steele). He said, “Hello , gentlemen.” And I said, “No.” … That’s how I react now because it feels natural.”

Our conversation ahead of the film’s screening at the Toronto International Film Festival comes the morning after the presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, in which Trump raised the specter of “transgender operations targeting illegal aliens in prison.” (“That feels like a line in an ‘SNL’ sketch,” Ferrell quips.) But the use of transgender people as scapegoats by politicians and pundits wouldn’t be possible without their historical mistreatment or outright erasure in popular culture. For the roughly 60% of Americans who don’t know a trans person, according to Pew, “Will & Harper” hopes to be an introduction: “Now you know Harper,” Greenbaum says.

Such positive messages compete for attention with the transphobic rhetoric of prominent figures like Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais, even on the same platform. (Netflix, which releases “Will & Harper,” also hosts numerous projects by the hot-tempered comedians that treat trans people as the butt of jokes.) But Steele refuses to take her comments seriously — or bend her own creative process simply to combat them.

“When egos are hurt, people troll,” she says. “And I look at a lot of these people and they enjoy the trolling.” She hopes that Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, the Olympic women’s welterweight champion, “sues JK Rowling” over tweets impersonating “Harry Potter” author Khelif mistakenly referred to as a man. “These people need help.”

“I want our voice and my example to be louder in the end,” Steele added. “I just hope it drowns out the weaker voice, and that’s my method. I don’t like confrontations. For one thing, it’s easy to confront someone like Dave Chappelle and get eviscerated. It’s like going on Fox News” with (former host) Tucker Carlson. Why should I subject myself to this when I’m just going to be eaten up in a way that I don’t enjoy?”

“Will & Harper” actively attempts to neutralize calls from cable news anchors and stand-up comics for “cancel culture” by not taking any topic of conversation off the table. With Ferrell as her curious interlocutor, Steele explains her choice of a new name, discusses her physical appearance and sexuality, and confesses her bouts of suicidal ideation. She introduces her children, visits her sister, shares her letters, diaries and most painful memories. Because of this vulnerability, she offers a remarkable invitation to viewers who might otherwise pass judgment or avoid the conversation altogether for fear of saying the wrong thing, causing offense, or finding out that their experience is not universally true.

“One of the many things I loved about her transition is her constant desire to talk about it,” says Steele’s friend and former “SNL” co-worker Kristen Wiig, who co-wrote and performed an original song for the film. “(It promoted) that open dialogue to maintain those connections, strengthen them and really explain what she had been going through for years that many of us weren’t privy to.”

According to Greenbaum, the film has already succeeded in sparking this dialogue among viewers. At a screening at the Sundance Film Festival, where the film had its world premiere earlier this year, he recalls meeting a woman and her son, a trans man who had been estranged since transitioning but reconnected when she met them Bought tickets for “Will & Harper” as a kind of cinematic olive branch. For her part, Steele admits that she’s more afraid of “Will & Harper” resonating with trans audiences than with cis audiences — perhaps because she understands firsthand the damage Hollywood’s powerful mirror does.

“Klinger probably destroyed my life,” she says of the cross-dressing character “M*A*S*H,” which Jamie Farr plays for laughs. “He literally wanted to be fired because he was crazy for doing this. That was his whole character.” In contrast, James Caan and Alan Arkin’s 1974 buddy cop film Freebie and the Bean became one of their favorite films thanks to its thieving female impersonator. “It was confusing to see a man looking so beautiful,” she says.

In this confusion lay the other animating question of “Will & Harper,” and indeed of LGBTQ+ popular culture more broadly: What story would we tell about ourselves if we could tell any story we wanted? Some will argue that self-expression is the goal, others more moral suasion; Some will prefer soft power to storming the barricades, others the opposite. Proponents of populism will face those of high art as the diplomats among us seek to push them into the narrowing middle ground of our society. And anyone who tells you that their way is the only true way is either uninformed or lying.

“I guess I’m ashamed, but it was just a fun show with talented actors,” Ferrell says of “Will & Grace,” gently dismissing Greenbaum’s earlier assessment. “In some ways a big, groundbreaking statement show – yes, of course I recognize that at the same time. But this is also just great ensemble comedy. Writing is fun. Great conditions.”

It is noteworthy that Steele takes no position on this. She doesn’t have to. “Will & Harper” — what “Will & Grace” was like for gay men of a certain generation — is just one of countless possible variations on trans representation. There is no shortage of stories to tell and unanswerable questions to ask.

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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.