Many of the songs nominated in the Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics Emmy category occupy key spots in their programs, and “Agatha All Along”’s “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road” appears in eight different versions over the course of its season. But no other contender gets quite the buildup of “Harper and Will Go West,” the sprightly and touching ditty plays at the end of the documentary “Will & Harper.”
The film charts a cross-country trek made by Will Ferrell and his close friend Harper Steele, a former “Saturday Night Live” head writer who recently came out as a trans woman. Early in their journey, they phone their “SNL” pal Kristen Wiig and ask her to write them a theme song that’s a little folky, slightly jazzy, uptempo but not too up, sort of twangy, kind of country and will make you cry.
Their repeated but futile attempts to get back in touch with Wiig to check on her progress become a running theme throughout the movie, until the song pops up during the credits and pretty much checks all those boxes.
“The actual conversation was longer (than what you see in the film),” Wiig said. “They originally listed every type of music that you could possibly imagine. We had talked about making that version, but it would’ve been a crazy song that made everyone anxious.”
Instead, Wiig and composer/producer Sean Douglas sat down with “Will & Harper”director Josh Greenbaum to fashion the song in Douglas’ home studio.
“We started by talking about what it was going to be like, what themes, what styles we were going to use,” Wiig said. “I was extremely moved by the movie because Harper is an old friend, so it was a very emotional thing for me. And we didn’t want the song to just be a joke, but we wanted it to have some lightness, some humor.”
While he was editing the movie, Greenbaum said he struggled to find the right tone: “If I let things become too comedic, the film would not do justice to the pathos and emotion of the story. But if I stripped the film of all things comedic, I’d be incredibly disingenuous to the very funny people that Will and Harper are.”
In the studio, the songwriters reached for that same balance. “The biggest challenge was to make sure we were walking the line of celebrating the movie and the real emotional journey that they go on together, but also wanting to be funny,” Douglas said. “I was probably overly eager because Josh is so funny and Kristen’s famously funny. I was like, ‘What if we said this? What if we said that?’ And then you’re like, what are we really talking about here? You have to make sure the core of it stays true.”
Douglas started throwing out melodic ideas on the piano, and the song’s opening lines — “Harper and Will go west/Just a couple old friends and a couple brand-new breasts” — came quickly. (Douglas and Wiig are credited with writing the music, and all three with writing the lyrics.)
“We had a certain groove going and the first couple of lines, and then we were off and running,” Douglas said. “Everyone was kind of passing the ball back and forth, and we had a song by the end of the day.”
The movie and song, by the way, underwent an awards transition. “Will & Harper” received enough of a theatrical release to qualify for the Oscars last year, but not enough to lose its Emmy eligibility. Last December, the movie made the 15-film shortlist in the Oscars’ Best Documentary Feature category, and “Harper and Will Go West” did the same in the Best Original Song category.
An Oscar nomination in either category would have stripped the film of Emmy eligibility – but because it wasn’t nominated, it lived to resurface at the Emmys several months later.
A version of this story appeared in the Down to the Wire: Comedy issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.
