Actor Will Ferrell said he regrets Follow your trans co-star to a restaurant in Texas, Harper Steele got a strange reaction from diners.
It happened while Ferrell and Steele, the former head writers of “Saturday Night Live,” were filming their new Netflix documentary, “Will & Harper,” which follows their 17-day road trip across the country “Harper To reconnect and reintroduce the country to its true form” after Steele came out as transgender in 2022.
When Steele mentioned that the state has not done enough for trans rights, she received an unexpected and uncomfortable response from diners at a Texas restaurant, The New York Times reported,
“I’m from Iowa, but I’ll raise a glass to your great state of Texas,” Steele said to a receptive audience of diners at the Big Texan Steak Ranch in Amarillo, where Ferrell and Steele got to try the restaurant’s famous 72- Had planned. Ounce Steak Challenge.
“I want you guys to do more for trans rights in this state,” Steele said, which drew hushed cheers and a few groans from the audience. kron reported,
“Good luck with Texas and trans rights, okay?” Ferrell added. The toast was not included in the documentary, but Steele and Ferrell shared their reactions to the moments that followed.
“The room started to feel very wrong to me,” Steele said in the film. “I felt like my transness was on display, I guess, and suddenly I didn’t feel good in that way.”
Ferrell responded, “The saddest thing to me is… I just feel… I feel like I let you down in that moment.”
“I really had no idea how intense it was going to be and I felt responsible for not properly investigating the situation we were putting ourselves in,” Ferrell told The New York Times. ” “It felt like it was going to be a soulless place where you eat a big steak for a while, and then you go in and there’s a thousand people sitting in this room and I said, ‘Oh, why are we here? ?”
Steele described the feeling of being “on display” in that moment.
“We gave a little toast, and I said something about passing a trans bill, and there was kind of an uproar in the room and a little noise and a woman yelled, ‘We still love you.’ I hate that phrase,” Steele said. “I may be completely misinterpreting this woman, but this is what I felt in the room: ‘Still’ is conditional. You still love me when I finally give up being trans and turn my life over to Christ. Even though I’m some kind of sinner or something, they still love me. That’s how I felt.”
“I wish I would have gone in and said: ‘No. This is going to be terrible. Come on, let’s go,'” Ferrell said in response. “I was feeling remorse and guilt for even going there.”
Steele had earlier criticized The New York Times in an interview Independent As in “generally left-leaning, but sometimes very anti-trans.” This is strange…”
Steele said in that interview, “That’s why the first thing I do is ask reporters who interview me if they trust me.” “Do they believe I exist? That I’m legitimate? Because that’s not always part of the conversation. I like to start there. Because there are a lot of people in the liberal community who for one reason or another fail to pay attention to this.”
Ferrell also said that “transphobia” comes from people “not having confidence” in themselves.
“There is hatred out there,” Farrell told The Independent. “It’s very real, and it’s very unsafe for trans people in some situations.”
He added, “It’s very strange to me, because Harper is ultimately…she.” “After all she is who she always wanted to be. Whether you can ultimately get your head around it or not, why would you care if someone is happy? Why is he threatening you? If the trans community is threatening to you, I think it stems from you not being confident or safe with it.
Fox News’ Lindsay Kornick contributed to this report.
