‘Why is that threatening to you?’: Will Ferrell defends the trans community following Netflix’s ‘Will and Harper’ documentary

Will Ferrell is a trans ally because he stepped up when he was needed most.

In 2022, a friend of his sent him an email announcing that she was undergoing gender transition, and he immediately stood by her. That friend was Harper Steele, a writer for Saturday Night Live, and the Steele-Ferrell friendship forms the basis of a new Netflix documentary, Will & Harper.

It’s a depressing fact that prejudice against trans people has grown extremely strong in the past few years. Anti-trans groups in both the USA and the UK have made considerable political headway, and plenty of trans people now remain in the closet out of pure fear as to what will happen when they come out. Will Ferrell rightly hates this state of affairs, and now he’s spoken about it to the Independent while promoting Will & Harper.

“There is hatred out there,” Ferrell told the outlet. “It’s very real and it’s very unsafe for trans people in certain situations. But I don’t know why trans people are meant to be threatening to me as a cis male. I don’t know why Harper is threatening to me.”

He continued:

“It’s so strange to me, because Harper is finally … her. She’s finally who she was always meant to be. Whether or not you can ultimately wrap your head around that, why would you care if somebody’s happy? Why is that threatening to you? If the trans community is a threat to you, I think it stems from not being confident or safe with yourself.”

The idea that trans people are somehow threatening is a very, very dangerous one, but it’s been allowed to run rampant across social media for years now. Prominent anti-trans activists, such as Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, lump trans women in with cis males and insist they are a danger, despite trans people being no more dangerous than any other group of people. (And isn’t it extremely cold and clinical to view the world this way, divided into ranked groups of least to most “dangerous”?)

Will Ferrell is hoping that Will & Harper will spark a new conversation about trans rights and prejudice. The film isn’t supposed to be a political piece, but at its core, it is political, because it has to be—it’s an attempt to change minds and hearts by showing that trans people are just that, people. It’s very depressing that the world has come to that. We need more allies like Ferrell and we need them to keep making movies like this one.