“Will & Harper:” Whose lines were more exquisitely feminine than Will Ferrell's?

The dude who helped write Ferrell's SNL sketches has gone trans and you're suddenly supposed to pretend he was always a woman.

I always knew that Will Ferrell's best friend / writing partner must be fundamentally, deeply feminine. Who can watch old Will Ferrell sketches on Saturday Night Live and not recognize the profound femaleness of Harper (formerly Andrew) Steele's writing for Will?

Clearly, Harper was assigned the wrong sex at birth a half century ago, but Will immediately recognized Harper's intense womanliness and made sure to incorporate it into all his SNL routines, which are like Jane Austen and both Bronte sisters wrote them together.

From the New York Times magazine:

Change Can Be Beautiful. Just Ask Will and Harper.

Credit...Devin Oktar Yalkin for The New York Times

By David Marchese

Sept. 7, 2024

How well do we know our friends? Our neighbors? Ourselves? In the new documentary “Will & Harper,” which opens in select theaters on Sept. 13 and will stream on Netflix starting Sept. 27, the superstar comedian Will Ferrell and his best friend and frequent collaborator, Harper Steele, take a New York-to-California road trip together to try to answer those questions.

Hitting the highway on a quest for meaning is a classic American story, but it hasn’t been told in exactly this fashion before: Steele is a trans woman who came out to her friends, including Ferrell, two years ago. That was after years as a comedy writer, many of them at “Saturday Night Live,” where they both worked and where Steele eventually became a head writer.

Tina Fey was always famous for being the first female SNL head writer, and transformed that accomplishment into a great sit-com Thirty Rock.

Does this mean Tina’s is (was?) no longer the first female head writer?

Okay, forget that. I looked it up: Tina is still first. She was solo head writer in Season 25, while Steele was a co-head writer in Seasons 30-33.

Season 30-Season 31 eps. 1-10: Tina Fey and Andrew Steele

Season 31 eps. 11-19: Tina Fey, Andrew Steele, and Seth Meyers

Seasons 32-33: Andrew Steele, Seth Meyers, and Paula Pell

Head writer at SNL is not a job like being Pope, but one that usually shifts around a lot in various combinations.

The two friends explained to me that the show wasn’t always the easiest environment, though they have different reasons for saying so. They also experienced some ups and downs on their cross-country drive, which gave them a chance to talk through what Steele’s transition means for their friendship and to get a clearer sense of how their fellow Americans feel about transgender identity.

As you might expect, the film’s soul-searching often comes wrapped in laughs. But given the politicization of trans rights, even situations the duo set up for silly comedy can turn tense. There’s a key scene in the documentary in which Steele and Ferrell stop for what they hope is a goofy eating challenge at a rowdy Texas steakhouse. It does not wind up being goofy. …

Sacha Baron Cohen is kicking himself right now for not doing a road trip movie about how transphobic Americans are to a 6’3” guy in a dress.

Q. I think of comedians as people who like to tease, not the gentlest with displays of vulnerability. Harper, given the internal disconnect you were feeling, what was the “S.N.L.” work environment like for you?

Steele: I think if you look in a comedy room, you’re looking at a lot of disassociation and people who are hiding things. We know that because people are drug addicts;

After all, in SNL’s half century on the air, no viewer ever got the impression that any of the performers or writers might have drug issues.

Darrell Hammond said that he was cutting himself. You’re walking into that environment, and you don’t want to let a lot of your vulnerability come out. I can’t say I was sitting around there thinking I was a woman. I just know it’s a scary environment. You’re walking in there and as soon as anything got too real, you gotta find a laugh.

Q. Is there anything that you wrote or were in that makes you think, I wouldn’t have handled that subject like that today?

Steele: A good third of my comedy. There were a few times even while seeing the sketch mounted, I would go, ugh. I think that is a fear-based thing where you feel like you’ve got to please an audience or you’re losing your job, and you make a decision that is not — I probably felt a lot of fear, impostor syndrome. I might have overstepped bounds.

Ferrell: I’d have to go back and review shows, but I’m sure there’d be a fair amount where you’d lament the choice. I mean, in a way, the cast — you’re kind of given this assignment. So I’m going to blame the writers.

Steele: Yeah, he’s not culpable at all. [Laughs.] I wrote Monica Lewinsky stuff I wasn’t proud of.

A lot of people seem to like Steele’s 1998 sketch in which famous pundits discuss the Lewinsky sex scandal while riding donkeys:

Riding My Donkey Political Talk Show

5 Stars

It's a political talk show atop donkeys

Now this is stoner humor. I don't know if this was an idea conceived while under the influence but it certainly seemed like it. Will opens this with a song about riding his donkey and not caring what you say about it before introducing his guests who are also riding donkeys. This is the nation's number 1 political round table and donkey riding show. CNN correspondent, Mary Tillotson is riding Old General, ABC's Sam Donaldson is riding Diablo and CNN's Bernard Shaw is atop Mr. Apples. Almost immediately Tim falls off his donkey and the technical snafus keep coming from there. This was a sketch designed to fall apart and watching the train wreck was incredible. All of them are talking about whether the media has gone too far and if there will ever come a day where people will no longer be interested in straight news from people riding donkeys. An old prospector looking for gold runs by, Indians start attacking, Will shoots a stagecoach robber, Darrell is shot with an arrow that doesn't come at the appropriate time. It was a beautiful failure and what a live comedy show is all about. Will ends it by saying they've come off looking pretty darn smart.

Could Joyce Carol Oates have brought more feminine insight to “Riding My Donkey?” than the future Harper Steele did?

I wrote some good Britney Spears stuff and some stuff that I’m not as proud of. I wrote some Clinton things I wasn’t proud of. I’m just moving on. I have to.

Q. The Janet Reno character hits a false note now.

Ferrell: That’s something I wouldn’t choose to do now.

Steele: This kind of bums me out. I understand the laugh is a drag laugh. It’s, “Hey, look at this guy in a dress, and that’s funny.” It’s absolutely not funny.

For the umpteenth time, when a high-achieving middle-aged straight guy announces he’s always been a girl on the inside, he’s lying about being feminine. Instead, it’s a sex fetish.