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Will Ferrell’s days of dressing in drag for comedy are behind him.
Appearing on The New York Times’ podcast The Interview, Ferrell and former Saturday Night Live head writer Harper Steele covered a range of topics, from their long-lasting friendship to their new Netflix documentary Will & Harper, which premieres Friday, Sept. 27.
But when it came to the concept of drag comedy, the comic, 57, said he wouldn’t go down that road anymore.
“That’s something I wouldn’t choose to do now,” Ferrell said on the podcast when asked about his portrayal of then-U.S. Attorney Janet Reno during his run on SNL.
In Seasons 22 and 23 of SNL, Ferrell dressed in drag to portray Reno in several sketches. In the skits, he would don a wig, lipstick, fake breasts and a dress. While the skits elicited some laughs in the show’s audience back in 1996-1997, Steele — who served as one of the show’s writers during that period — says society’s sensibilities have evolved since then.
Courtesy of Netflix
“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,” Steele, a trans woman, said. “It’s absolutely a way that we should be able to live in the world.”
“However, with performers and actors, I do like a sense of play. This is an interesting question to me. Do queer people like The Birdcage or do they not?” she wondered. “Robin Williams, at least as far as we know, was not a gay man, and yet he spent about half of his comedy career doing a swishy gay guy on camera. Do people think that’s funny, or is it just hurtful? I’ve heard from gay men that it was funny, and I’ve heard from gay men that it was hurtful. I am purple-haired woke, but I wonder if sometimes we take away the joy of playing when we take away some of the range that performers, especially comedy performers, can do.”
Steele’s coming out as trans in 2022 jumpstarted the cross-country road trip she and Ferrell embarked on in Will & Harper, during which the two explored their friendship and Americans’ views regarding the trans community. It was an enlightening experience for Ferrell, who told Variety in January that “this was all new territory for me.”
Courtesy of Netflix
“I said to Harper: ‘What if we went on a road trip, I went with you, and we film it? I’ll be kind of like your offensive lineman,” Ferrell recalled on The Interview podcast. “It’ll be a chance for me to ask all the questions that I have, and we can examine what’s changed, what’s not, but I totally get it if you don’t want to.’ I think Harper finally landed on the square that, ‘Oh, we could help people possibly.’ ”
It’s Steele’s hope that the documentary plays a role in helping society become accepting of the trans community.
“There’s a process of normalizing queer people for America, and this movie does that. It makes the trans experience more understandable,” she explained. “It’s in a comedy language that they know from Will and me. It’s a good project. It’s representation in a good way. However, to be honest, I’m not that interested in normalizing for people who have hated me for centuries. I want the movie to make other people be gentler and softer and caring, and maybe if you’re a father who loved Anchorman and you’ve got a trans kid now, maybe you’re going to open yourself up.”
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Will & Harper premieres Friday, Sept. 27 on Netflix.
