Will, Harper, Donald and Transgender People

One of my earliest memories from my 1987-93 stint working in the Philippines was a beauty pageant I attended in a smallish provincial city with two American colleagues. One was a female co-worker at the foundation that employed me and the other a young, male agricultural engineer.

The several hundred-strong audience, comprising both men and women, was enthusiastic but polite, with the engineer cheering loudly for the prettiest contestants – and being met, for reasons we’d soon understand, with chuckles from the Filipino crowd.

It was only when the event ended that we realized both that it was a transgender competition and how normal that was in Philippine society.

A Well-timed Film About an Evolving Identify and Friendship

As I came to learn in the subsequent months, “bakla” individuals were to some extent commonly accepted in Philippine society even back then. The term broadly applies to men with feminine characteristics, clothing or identities, be they gay, bi or transgender. The acceptance (albeit not complete) of transgender persons in particular was quite the contrast with Reagan-era America.

And sadly, still a contrast with much of America today, as Donald Trump has just launched the first-ever general election transgender attack ad. Look for him to exploit this wedge issue as part of his divisive, hate-spewing, bigotry-spurring campaign.

Against this backdrop, the documentary Will & Harper just dropped on Netflix, intentionally timed by co-stars Will Ferrell and Harper Steele for election season release. It couldn’t have happened at a better time for pushing back against Trump’s attacks.

Coming to Terms

The film documents a cross-country trip that the two undertook after Steele came out as transgender to Ferrell and others in 2022. As Andrew Steele, the eventual Saturday Night Live head writer (2004-08) had joined the show the same week as Ferrell in 1995. A deep friendship flourished.

Will and Harper depicts their trip and friendship, as they encounter and visit a variety of people and locales from New York to Indiana to Texas to California. As Andrew, Steele would not have hesitated to visit the bars, race tracks and other settings along the way; as Harper, she both welcomes the challenge and worries about the how she’ll be treated. The film thus displays both the pride Steele feels after finally coming out and the pain she still experiences.

Based partly on the film’s trailer, I’d half-thought that a Will Ferrell film, even one tackling as sensitive a topic as this, would feature a fair deal of humor as the two overcome whatever adversity they encounter. I thought wrong.

Though it has its light and even joyful moments, the documentary mainly presents Steele coming to terms with her new life, the two friends coming to terms with the discomfort of figuring out where their bond goes from here and Ferrell coming to understand the challenges his pal faces.

She receives support from some folks they meet along the way. But there are also scenes such as one presenting the hurtful social media stabs she reviews after they visit a touristy Texas steakhouse.

The upshot for both my wife and me was appreciation for this honest film, the unbreakable friendship and love it depicts and the strength Steele shows. But also sadness over what Steele still has to go through – in dealing not just with society but with her emerging self – even as she’s taken a great leap into being herself in the world and tossing aside her lifelong male mask.

The fact that this documentary features the two companions trailed by cameras at every turn – with Will Ferrell being part of this dynamic duo – strains but does not break its authenticity. They’re well aware of how the very observation of their trip changes it.

Not Going Back

Thankfully, the United States has made great strides on LGBTQI+ rights since the Reagan era, when the then-president quite possibly reflected homophobia in not mentioning AIDS until 1985 and not giving an address on it until 1987.

With Trump’s possible return to the presidency, though, we may stand on the precipice of at least a partial return to the dark days, in terms of bigotry he promotes and laws he alters.

I’d like to say that the Philippines has made great strides, given that it was ahead of the United States in at least some ways regarding transgender-oriented attitudes decades ago. Indeed, it ranks second-highest in LGBTQI+ acceptance in Asia, and hosted by far the largest gathering (110,000) of such folks in Southeast Asia last year.

On the other hand, national bills to criminalize discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity and related characteristics languish in the country’s congress each year, and over 50 transgender and nonbinary individuals have been murdered there since 2010.

Still, at least the Philippines does not seem to be facing a great threat of a great leap backwards regarding gender rights, including for transgender people. Here in the United States, we do.

In one way, this film is simply about two friends’ love and struggles. But in another, not-so-small way, Will and Harper humanizes both how far we’ve come and how far we could fall – and the cost for people like Harper Steele and for all of us. It puts a face on suffering we know to be so wrong and the progress we know to be so right. It adds another dimension to Kamala Harris’s clarion call, “We’re not going back.”

It’s well worth watching.