Tina Fey has taken on an unusual role in her latest film as an actor-producer.
In Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, she plays real-life journalist Kim Barker, who quit her desk job to cover the war in Afghanistan for three years. Fey first heard about Barker's memoir The Taliban Shuffle because it mentions that she saw herself as a Tina Fey type.
"When I read the book, I enjoyed it so much that I had to jump quickly," Fey says. "A lot of times, when you read a book like that you're like, 'Oh my gosh, I have to get this before anyone else buys it.' Otherwise the movie could have starred, like, Julia Roberts or Kate Winslet!"
The film's title is military code for WTF, which Fey says refers to the insane, chaotic atmosphere those people have to cope with. "It's not a broad comedy," she says, distinguishing it from her previous work. "It's a very human story about people who get addicted to this adrenaline lifestyle. These journalists work in these intense environments all day and then just sort of cut loose and party all night."
Both Fey and her costar Margot Robbie, who plays a fellow war correspondent, loved entering this macho world. "I got to fly in a helicopter, a Huey, with no doors on the side and it was really cool and exciting," Fey says. "I got to fire an AK-47, which a lot of my guy friends thought was so awesome, and I was like, 'It was fine.' But it's interesting - it's a complicated thing to be a woman anywhere, but especially over there. This culture says, here's the way to be safe from invasive male attention: cover yourself with a giant piece of fabric. Well, that's obviously not a Western solution."
In one scene, Fey's character wears a burqa. "I really did not like wearing that," she confesses. "It's very frustrating. You can't see. You can't tell if you're going to trip. You don't have use of your arms because there are no sleeves. Kim has talked about how, as a journalist, it was kind of freeing because then she could be invisible. But she's having a very different experience than the person who is being forced to wear it in their real life. It just made me very, very grateful to be born in the West."
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