“I love this country very much. I just don’t know now if he will love me back or not,” said Harper Steele, before Saturday night live The writer takes a cross-country trip with his longtime friend Will Ferrell in their new documentary, Will & Harper, currently streaming on Netflix.
After Steele transitioned into a woman, she and Ferrell decided to navigate their new dynamic by traveling from New York to California — stopping in parts of the country that might be a little less welcoming to transgender people along the way. Go. Their experiences in the film are largely happy—a lighthearted karaoke scene in Illinois, a heartfelt trip to Steele’s childhood home in Iowa, and even a positive outcome when entering a dive bar in Oklahoma that had a “Fuck Biden” poster hanging on it. wall.
But things get complicated in Texas when Ferrell and Steele visit Big Texan Steak Ranch—a restaurant in Amarillo that offers a free 72-ounce steak if patrons can finish it in less than an hour. Ferrell decided that this would be the perfect place to dust off the prop he brought on the trip: his Sherlock Holmes costume from the movie. failed in 2018 Holmes & Watson. “Ladies and gentlemen, the world’s greatest private detective, Sherlock Holmes,” he announced in full costume, sitting in the restaurant across from Steele as a customer shouted “Ricky Bobby!” in their direction.
What begins as a comedic stunt soon begins to feel claustrophobic. When an employee publicized Ferrell and Steele’s presence, he casually called her “Ms.” Dozens of cell phones and curious eyes were glued to this couple from every angle. “I was eating because I was nervous,” Steele admitted, the music becoming as ominous as the room itself. “Even though I’ve been in fishbowls many times in my life,” Ferrell replied, “this surpassed them all.”
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Although footage of this does not appear in the documentary, Steele also took the opportunity to raise a glass — and an important one — that night. A social media post shows Steele toasting “your great state of Texas” before telling the crowd, “I wish you would do more for transgender rights in this state ,” as the room fell silent. “It was dead, completely dead,” she added. “That’s not how we treat you in Iowa.” One woman shouted, “We still love you,” a comment that displeased Steele.
“I hate this phrase,” she said later New York Times. “I may be completely wrong about this woman, but this is the feeling I have when I’m in the room: ‘static’ is the condition. You still loved me when I finally gave up being transgender and gave my life to Christ. They still love me even though I’m a sinner or something. I feel it.”
The director of the film, Josh Greenbaum, speak Guardian how that moment affected his stars: “It was definitely a learning point for Will, that not all attention is good attention, especially for those people in the transgender community. It was an unforeseen error, but I didn’t want to hide it and not include it. A big part of the trans experience is that there’s a lot of hate, a lot of it online.”
Ferrell and Steele left the premises without incident. However, the next day, they are greeted by social media attacks throughout the film. A note shop “awkward reaction” Ferrell and Steele welcomed at the restaurant posted about its diverse visit social media account but does not identify or highlight Steele. (Vanity fair Big Texan Steak Ranch has been contacted for comment.)
“I started to feel like the room was very wrong,” Steele says in the film, a day after their experience. “I guess I felt a little like my transness was on display, and suddenly it didn’t feel right.” Ferrell became even more emotional, breaking down in tears as he told his friend, “I felt like I let you down in that moment, you know? I thought, Oh shit, we have to worry about Harper’s safety.”
