'I don't get why I'm meant to be afraid of trans people'

Will Ferrell and Harper Steele have made a film about how their friendship evolved after Harper came out as trans at 61. Adam White meets them and their director Josh Greenbaum

Why, I ask Will Ferrell, does transphobia exist? He blinks, opens his mouth agape, and shakes his head. “I think we fear what we don’t know,” he replies, softly.

Ferrell is still getting used to questions like this. As a comedian and a movie star, he’s spent decades quietly existing behind a litany of absurd, fictional man-babies. As audiences, we have a handle on Anchorman’s Ron Burgundy, or Ricky Bobby from Talladega Nights, or Buddy from Elf – big, flashy creations who whine and wonder and peacock.

The man behind all of it, though, is more of a question mark. Think about it. Do you have any idea of Will Ferrell’s personal life and politics? So, when asked about the state of the world – and not, as he usually is, about whether there’ll ever be a Step Brothers sequel – he speaks slowly, deliberately and carefully. A funny man with his serious hat on.

I’m asking Ferrell about transphobia because of a new documentary, Will & Harper, named after the actor and his best friend of nearly 30 years, the comedy writer Harper Steele. In 2022, at the age of 61, Steele sent Ferrell a letter in which she told him she was trans, and that she was newly in the process of transitioning. “I just ask you as my friend to stand up for me,” Steele wrote. “Do your best to, if I’m misgendered, just speak up on my behalf, that’s all I ask.”