Will Ferrell's best friend came out as trans and his reaction is something we can all learn from

Best friends make it easier for us to get through our hard times and actor Will Ferrell is the best example for it. For his latest documentary film titled "Will & Harper", the actor went on a cross-country road trip with Harper Steele, his best friend who came out as trans in 2022. During a few interviews about the documentary, Ferrell opened up about the film's impact on his friendship with Steele. And the best part was, the "Blades of Glory" actor bore his soul reflecting on his "transition" when he learned about his best friend of 30 years coming out as trans. 

While speaking to Variety, Ferrell said that when Steele e-mailed her close friends about her transition, everyone was surprised but was genuinely excited for her. "All of us were extremely supportive and expressed love but that sort of opened the questions like, how can we help you? What do you need us to do?" said the "Elf" actor. Ferrell confessed that he had "zero knowledge" about the trans community before Steele's announcement and that he was in the process of learning more about them by simply listening and being there for them. Speaking about the documentary, Steele said, "It tells the story of a cis friend of a trans person who has to transition himself." 

Ferrell met Steele while working on Saturday Night Live where Steele worked as a writer from 1995 to 2008. So the duo's friendship is quite deep-rooted and is going strong even after three decades. The "Succession" star, in a statement to the Deadline, said about his journey with Steele during the film, "For me, it was a chance to transition myself, in a way - to learn, to get to know my friend even more than I knew her before, to get to ask these questions that I think a lot of cis people still have, for me to struggle on camera with asking these questions." Ferrell mentioned that despite a few emotional moments while filming, the duo was willing to capture that on camera and with time, such discussions became "super honest."

For Steele, this documentary gave a confidence boost. "I will say you probably don’t want to be overly confident. I’m still a little leery of what I would do in my 20s and 30s when I was performing male, but I think I am a lot more confident and I think this documentary helped me immensely in that sense," she said. While filming this documentary, Steele was just in her second year of transition, as per her statement to The Hollywood Reporter. "I thought this would help me to, sort of dissipate some of the nervousness surrounding it (transition), walking around with a big shot like Will was going to be helpful to me," she said.

The documentary was shot for 17 days and had over 250 hours of footage. During this time, both Ferrell and Steele had a list of questions to ask each other about the latter's transition. It was not only about Steele's emotions on her journey into womanhood but also about Ferrell's journey of familiarizing himself with his best friend's new phase of life.