How did Ferrell & Harper Steele meet and how long have they been friends

Netflix’s engrossing new buddy road-trip documentary, Will & HarperFeatures comedy duo Will Ferrell and Harper Steele as they motor across America to celebrate Steele’s transition from male to female. The two icons of American comedy have shared a friendship and very successful working relationship for close to 30 years, From their first meeting in Saturday Night Live to their partnership as founder and creative director respectively of web production company Funny or Die.

Will & Harper Marks Ferrell and Steele’s fourth, and first non-fiction, film collaboration. Most famously, they co-wrote the gloriously off-beat movie Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga In 2020, and it was less than two years later that the then-Andrew Steele notified Ferrell by email about the decision to fully transition to Harper. That revelation led them to Will & HarperApparently a project that Would throw the two friends together for a 3000-mile trip Across the U.S. it. During which they would examine their own, and Middle America’s, response to Steele’s new gender reality.

Will Ferrell & Harper Steele met in 1995 when they started working at Saturday Night Live

Harper Steele supports Ferrell at SNL

Remarkably, Ferrell and Steele were hired by Saturday Night Live as performer and writer in the same week in 1995. They immediately struck a symbiotic relationship – Ferrell’s early work in Saturday Night Live Didn’t catch it at first, and as he said CBS“People kind of said, he’s not that funny, and it was Harper who reported back to some of the writers like, ‘Oh no, don’t sleep on him, he’s pretty funny.’“The initial support paid dividends like these Two comics created some of SNL’s most iconic charactersincluding Robert Goulet.

Harper went to be SNL Chief writer for four years, during which he collected Five Emmy nominations, winning the 2002 award for outstanding writing. It was Ferrell who eventually lured Steele away from SNL When, as a founder of Funny or Die, he hired Harper as creative director and thus began their journey in filmmaking.

Will Ferrell & Harper Steele have remained best friends for the past 29 years

Ferrell and Steele’s professional relationship flourished post-SNL

Will & Harper is as engaging as it is surprising – the relationship between the two characters is warm, funny and heartfelt. Ferrell predictably carries the film’s funny bone And is even allowed gentle gags about breasts and driving, while Harper’s justified angst as she navigates various responses to her transition and to the gender biases they encounter as they venture across the country is both endearing and, at times, a little harrowing. Both comedians in Will & Harper Emerging from the trip energized and newly educated, their relationship strengthened and deepened by the experience.

Sources: CBS