Join Will Ferrell, Harper Steele, and director Josh Greenbaum on the red carpet at the Los Angeles premiere of the Sundance hit Will & Harper. This emotional documentary captures the life-changing road trip between Will and his longtime friend Harper as she navigates her journey of coming out as a trans woman. Hear their thoughts on friendship, identity, and the importance of sharing authentic trans stories in this heartfelt interview.
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00:00Well, congratulations on your project. I watched it. It's really, really beautiful, so I'm
00:04excited for everyone to see it. Harper, I wanted to go to you first. I know this journey
00:08is all about, you know, self-discovery. Was there a real turning point for you on this
00:12journey that just felt different than the rest?
00:15Yeah, I mean, when we got to Vegas, I had been, it's almost, this is almost too nuanced
00:23to explain, but my friend Will, by the time we got to Vegas, this is a trip that all non-trans
00:29people have to take with their trans friends, whether in a car or just in life, where they
00:34finally see that person as the way they want to be seen. And I, we got to Vegas and it
00:40clicked on, it clicked. I was like, Will is seeing me the way I like to be seen.
00:45Will, the same question to you. Was there a turning point for you on this whole adventure?
00:50I mean, that was, it has to be the same moment. It just, as I kind of described in the film,
00:59I was just, I was with Harper and the memories of who she was, who she was pretending to
01:08be were, were almost ghost-like. And, and that was a, that was a powerful thing to experience
01:18in Las Vegas of all places. But, but it's, it was awesome.
01:24I can't wait for the sequel project. I don't know what you're going to cook up, but I want
01:27to see, I want to see another one, right? Yeah, maybe a balloon ride, I don't know.
01:32Oh, okay. She likes it. That's a long balloon ride.
01:37Just to start us off, how are you feeling? How surreal is this moment?
01:40It's wild. I think for Will, Harper and I, I don't know that we ever thought this would
01:43be happening. We just went on the road and we're like, I don't know, we'll just film
01:47and see where this takes us. So it's, it's pretty wild to be here. And even for me, it's
01:52really special because I'm supposed to have two premieres in my past and both of my movies
01:56never happened. My first movie was Pandemic and the second one had an actor's strike.
02:00So I'm very grateful that this is actually happening. The timing. Yes. Yeah.
02:05I did want to ask just kind of about like the, the thought process, the vision behind
02:09it all, you know, like when you were planning to go on this journey with Will and with Harper,
02:14what did that look like? Yeah, it was, you know, I try not to over
02:18plan since it's a documentary, but at some level we needed to know where we were going,
02:22you know, so I, I tasked Harper with, you know, she's done these road trips a hundred
02:25times or more. And I just said, let me know where you think you want to go. And I kept
02:30my crew really small so that if they saw something, you know, like a basketball game or they wanted
02:35to go go karting, we were able to just jump out and do it. But you know, other than that,
02:40I tried not to do too much planning prior and the bulk of the work comes sort of after
02:44you get home from 17 days of shooting and have to work through 240 hours of footage.
02:49And that's, that's when the real directing kind of comes. So, yeah, I did want to ask,
02:53I mean, I feel like there is a lot that goes into it. Like you said, you know, going through
02:56all the footage at the end, but was there a most challenging part to creating the documentary?
03:01Yeah, I think, I think it honestly was the, the editing was the most challenging because
03:06with 240 hours of footage and there's a lot of wonderful scenes and conversations and
03:10jokes to figure out how to distill the experience that I got to witness over 17 days into less
03:17than two hours, I think was really hard. But I am really happy with how it turned out and
03:22really proud of it. And then I think the only other major challenge along the way was just
03:26figuring out like, you know, where are we staying and where are we eating?
03:32Important questions.
03:33Important questions. And unfortunately, not what music we're listening to because I didn't
03:36let them listen to music because I needed clean dialogue. The movie has lots of music,
03:40but in the car, they were just talking eight, nine hours a day.
03:44Were you secretly eating like Dunkin' Donuts on the side?
03:47Oh, yes. I was eating everything. A lot of beef jerky. I don't know. I don't eat beef
03:51jerky normally. But once I, once I'm on a road trip, I'm going to have to buy beef jerky.
03:55I don't know what that is.
03:56And I do want to ask you just like for a message for viewers, obviously, there's a very deep
04:01meaning behind all of this. And we're showing how trans people can be targeted in these
04:05hostile environments. So what are you really hoping viewers take away from seeing this?
04:08Yeah, I hope that, you know, I hope everybody who has any interest in watching this tunes
04:13in. And if you don't know a trans person, which a lot of people don't, you know, GLAAD
04:18gave me the statistic. I think it's going down, but that 70 percent of people don't
04:22know, personally know a trans person that, you know, those people tend to think of them
04:26maybe as unknown or they're getting their information from politicians or the media,
04:31neither of which usually have the trans community's best interest in mind. So, you know, take
04:35it from if you don't know someone, watch the movie and then you'll know Harper. And
04:39she's fantastic. She's funny and loving and complicated and good friends with Will Ferrell
04:45and all the things we might love in a human being. And hopefully you'll realize that,
04:50yes, she just wants to exist. As you'll hear in the film, she just wants to be. And I think
04:54that's that we should all should all aspire to make sure everyone feels like they can
04:57exist in our world.