He plays an unlikely role in Will Ferrell’s new Netflix film.

From Robert Goulet to Ron Burgundy, Will Ferrell has thrived on embodying a particularly silly form of American masculinity, dispatching and serenading lovable dorks who don’t realize their time is up. And sometimes he did it with the help of Harper Steele, a former head writer for Saturday evening live who came out as a trans woman during the pandemic. Ferrell, who started at SNL the same week as Steele in 1995, has long considered her one of his best friends. But neither was sure how Steele’s announcement would affect their relationship. So in Josh Greenbaum’s documentary Wil & Harperthe two set out on a cross-country road trip, using their hours behind the wheel to gain a new understanding of who they are to each other, and testing it out at stops along the way.

Harper, who, as she now puts it, previously “performed as a character named Andrew,” has a lifelong love of criss-crossing the country, stopping at dive bars and diners and sleeping in cheap motels. But she’s not sure if the places where she once felt most at home will welcome her new visible self. While she wouldn’t have thought twice about walking down a dark alley while presenting as a man, she learns to be “a little more afraid of that stuff.” The course she charts with Ferrell takes them from New York City to Los Angeles, with a stop in her hometown of Iowa City, and leans heavily toward a stereotypical American setting: a dive bar in rural Oklahoma, a steakhouse in Texas where the 72-ounce slice is free if you can eat it in less than an hour. Steele wants to know if she still fits in these places that have given her—a person whose core personality Ferrell describes as “born and raised in Iowa, 501 jeans, crappy beer”—so much joy, and if she even still feels safe. Do American institutions have a place for her? And in how many of those institutions have transgender people already found their place, whether the people around them know it or not? After all, Saturday evening live employed a trans writer in the mid-1990s. She just hadn’t figured it out yet.

Ferrell’s celebrity casts a shadow around them wherever they go, attracting goodwill – and attention, and it’s not all good. He’s used to being recognized, so much so that he makes a joke to the camera on the rare occasion his name draws a blank stare, but he realizes he’s never felt the kind of scrutiny that comes from a visibly trans woman in a deep red crowd. “As much as I’ve been in a fishbowl at different times in my life,” he tells Steele, “this trumps everything.” When Steele takes her first tentative steps at a roadside bar in Meeker, Oklahoma, she leaves Ferrell in the parking lot to see what it feels like to do it alone. But she keeps her phone close, ready to call whenever she needs help.

It turns out that the Full Moon Saloon’s patrons are perfectly hospitable to Steele — or at least as hospitable as they would be to any New Yorker with a camera crew — despite the ominous cutout of a “Fuck Biden” flag at the time. she walks through the door. (What goes unnoticed is the fact that, even as Ferrell waits outside, she is never truly alone.) At a nearby auto racing track, a man with a young daughter makes the invitation explicit: “Don’t be afraid. If you like it, come out.” While it finds more islands of open-mindedness than some might expect, Wil & Harper doesn’t idealize the core area, and it points out that some people who at least personally seem to tolerate Steele act very differently when they don’t have to look a trans person in the eye. At a Pacers game, she and Ferrell shook hands with Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb, only to find out in the car that he supported a bill banning gender-affirming care for minors and other anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. They make it out of that steakhouse in Texas unscathed, but when the video of Ferrell’s heroic meat-eating goes viral, the internet is flooded with transphobic reactions. There may be no conscious hostility in the Denny’s waitress who addresses the pair as “gentlemen,” but you can see Ferrell learning as the journey progresses, stepping in to correct misunderstandings and seizing opportunities to prevent them in advance.

No road trip in the company of Will Ferrell can pass for ordinary, but he tries to present himself as an avatar of cis-male ordinariness, a loyal and good-hearted friend who nevertheless has many questions: When did you know? Do you still want to have sex? And how do you like your new breasts? Watch occasionally Wil & Harper feels a bit like you’re being led by the hand, even though you feel like you’re ready to go alone. But the film’s intentions are sincere, and you get the sense that many of the people Ferrell and Steele encounter on their journey could benefit from an entry-level course. Ferrell may be one of the bigger stars in the country, but he’s also a guy sitting in a Walmart parking lot with an old friend, eating Pringles and sipping a Natty Light. (At times, the film’s penchant for showing off brand logos raises product placement jokes Talladega nights(but if Dunkin’ Donuts wants to lend its name to the story of a middle-aged trans woman, so much the better.) It’s as wholesome and as American as it gets.