In 2022, actor Will Ferrell and former SNL head writer Harper Steele undertook a seventeen-day road trip across America that included a variety of natural and cultural landmarks. If the specific stops – a basketball game, a stock car race, a dive bar, an open field to set off fireworks – strongly suggest blue-collar masculinity, there’s a reason.
The aim of the trip was twofold: to give the long-time friends a chance to connect in a new way, and to see if Steele could feel comfortable seeing the country the way she used to now that she’s living openly as a trans woman. In her words, “I’ve been everywhere. I love it so much. I just don’t know if it loves me back right now.” The film they made to document their trip premiered in early 2024 as Will & Harper, and at the end of September it was finally released on Netflix.
Road trips have been a part of American identity since the early twentieth century. The See America First campaign encouraged people to choose American tourism over European travel, touting the road trip as a patriotic act. By consuming the nation through tourism, drivers would become better Americans. With the popularity of the novel On the Road, road tripping took on the nostalgic dimension that has carried through to today. Road trippers are often looking for traces of the regional difference that has managed to survive contemporary capitalism’s push towards homogeneity. In those pockets of resistance to conformity travellers believe the real America waits.
The film fits neatly into the road trip narrative tradition that On the Road exemplifies, a balance between discovery of place and discovery of self. Both the travellers and the country are on display in the film. Narratives like these tend to emphasize aspects that get left out of slick, scripted stories: the discomfort, the mistakes, the encounters that don’t fit easily into a single story about what America means. Will & Harper is no different. The pair have some experiences that reinforce the fear that Steele and her children express before she and Ferrell set out. But mostly, Harper experiences kindness and warmth from people who want her to be happy as much as she does. The documentary doesn’t let the sensible expectation overwhelm the untidy reality.
Ultimately, Will & Harper’s road trip is an experiment in what David Seamon calls “place-ballet,” the combination of various small mobilities that foster feelings of belonging within a given location. Place-ballet is a function of repetition, and this road trip was repetition with a difference, one that both she and Ferrell recognized “might change the way [she] navigate[s] the country.” The term is normally used to describe the small mobilities people repeat in their own homes or neighbourhoods, but here place-ballet is scaled up to reflect the size of the United States itself. She wanted to see if she could still feel the same belonging she used to when she was presenting as a man.
But the welcome she received, the beginning of a new place-ballet, doesn’t mean that trans travel has always been smooth for her, or that it ever will be again. She recalls the experience of trying to road trip when she was still hiding her femininity – driving in women’s clothes but dreading the moment when she’d have to get gas or use a rest stop. Being afraid to get pulled over and have a police officer see her wearing a dress. She talks now about “learning to be afraid,” an experience that reflects the dangers of travelling as trans and as a woman. However much individual experiences may reflect openness and generosity, state apparatuses and cultural patterns still cause friction, inhibiting trans mobility, especially on the road.
So, while the film projects a hopeful Steele, with all the joy she has found in her transition, it is no more naïve than she is about the realities of trans life in America. She has gone so far as to explain the ways travelling with Ferrell and a camera crew has made her experience much safer than she feels it would have been, recognizing that she is far more privileged than many trans people. The trip this film documents isn’t her first or her last, but it does mark a change in how she approaches road travel and how she prepares herself for it. Including learning how to make room in her suitcase for heels.
Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash
