Last year, the Trump campaign spent nearly a quarter of a billion dollars on ads featuring anti-trans rhetoric and misinformation, making it a cornerstone issue of his campaign. Among his threats: removal of federal funding from any hospital or program that offers healthcare for trans people, which would affect Medicare, Medicaid, and Veterans Affairs, among others; denying trans people the right to serve their country through military service; and removing all anti-discrimination protections for transgender people in employment, housing, and schools.
Keep up with the latest in LGBTQ+ news and politics. Sign up for The Advocate's email newsletter.
We live in a time where anti-LGBTQ politicians and right-wing leaders see acceptance of LGBTQ people growing year after year, and they are working aggressively to turn back the clock to an era when our community was relegated to the margins of society. Transgender people are their primary target.
When the premise of Will & Harper was first shared with GLAAD, we were admittedly skeptical. Historically the world of comedy has not been kind nor welcoming of transgender people, least of all shows like Saturday Night Live where Will Ferrell, one of the two participants in this documentary, first became a household name.
Yet after the filmmakers provided GLAAD with a cut of Will & Harper last fall, prior to its acceptance at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, we immediately understood the opportunities that the film presented. It is a smart film that leads with humor, empathy, and acceptance, and we knew that it had the power to change hearts and minds about transgender people. It would be a powerful antidote to the well-funded efforts to dehumanize and scapegoat the entire trans community.
In Will & Harper, Harper Steele, who was a writer on Saturday Night Live and met Ferrell during his first week as a cast member, sends him a letter telling him that she is a trans woman.
In the worst sort of comedy sketches and stand-up routines, that premise would be the set-up for a series of jokes at the trans woman's expense. Saturday Night Live and other sketch shows have done this repeatedly over the years, as have recent stand-up comedy specials on Netflix and other platforms.
But Will & Harper heads in the complete opposite direction. Harper and Will decide to drive cross-country together, visiting the small towns, dive bars, and stock car races that Harper has always loved - while also exploring what her transition means for their friendship.
That description makes the film sound quite sincere and earnest. And in some parts it is. But Will and Harper are also friends and comedians with decades of experience — so it is also very, very funny. It's far too rare that a trans person gets to be in the driver's seat telling the jokes, rather than being the target of the jokes. As we saw over 25 years ago with Will & Grace, cultural acceptance of LGBTQ people increases when people laugh with us, not at us. Unfortunately, there are currently only eight transgender characters on television, and seven of them are in drama series. But in Will & Harper, audiences are invited to watch two funny people, one of whom happens to be trans, try to make each other laugh.
As the woman at the heart of the film, Harper Steele is proof of the miraculous, life-saving power of living as your authentic self; but more than that, she’s also a reminder that trans people are just people. We go on road trips, have bad taste in beer, share inside jokes with old friends, and have careers, family, interests, and hobbies unrelated to our gender. While Harper is not representative of the entire trans community - no one person can be - she is complex and multifaceted: strong and vulnerable, kind and funny, caring and raffish. In simply sharing her story, she makes it clear that trans people deserve the same freedoms that this country promises to everyone. Trans people are not a debate, nor are we a problem to be solved.
Throughout the film, we watch Will as he tries to figure out how to be an ally to Harper. When it's just the two of them, Will wants to hear Harper's story and gently asks her questions that friends of 30 years are allowed to ask. And when they are in public, Will is exposed to the sometimes casual, sometimes hostile, anti-trans attitudes and language that are directed toward Harper. In the film, he doesn't always know how to respond in those situations, but we see the empathy he feels for Harper, as well as his humility and willingness to learn.
This is a position many people find themselves in: they want to support trans people, but they aren't sure how to go about it. More than ninety percent of Americans say they personally know someone who's lesbian, gay, or bisexual. However, nearly seventy percent of Americans say they've never met a transgender person in real life. That means that everything they know about trans people comes from the distorted, stereotypical, offensive trans characters they've seen in the media, as the Netflix documentary Disclosureillustrates so powerfully. Therefore, most people have to unlearn a lifetime of misinformation before they can truly understand the experiences of their transgender friends and family members.
During the lengthy and high-profile press tour promoting the film, it's clear Will has learned a lot. It's powerful to see Will Ferrell, a middle-aged white cisgender straight man and one of comedy's A-Listers, calmly and confidently correcting people if they use the wrong pronouns for Harper and making it clear that he believes trans people deserve respect. This is the impact of knowing and loving someone who happens to be transgender.
While Will & Harper doesn't gloss over the hostile cultural climate created by the extremism of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and policies, it also shows Harper and Will interacting with many typical Americans who don't really care whether you're trans or not. They just want to know if you like stock car racing. If you can ride a unicycle. If you're happy.
The success of Will & Harper makes it clear that trans stories are worth telling and can be a hit with audiences and critics alike. Will & Harper is the right film in the right year and it's a cultural touchstone that will stand the test of time and be a beacon of hope for the transformative power of love and friendship.
Alex Schmider is the senior director of entertainment and transgender inclusion at GLAAD.
Voices is dedicated to featuring a wide range of inspiring personal stories and impactful opinions from the LGBTQ+ community and its allies. Visit Advocate.com/submit to learn more about submission guidelines. Views expressed in Voices stories are those of the guest writers, columnists, and editors, and do not directly represent the views of The Advocate or our parent company, equalpride.