Tina Fey, Margot Robbie, More Talk WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT in NY

It was a great pleasure to be part of the Whiskey Tango Foxtrot press conference in New York, where war correspondent Kim Barkers, directors John Requa & Glenn Ficarra, and actors Tina Fey and Margot Robbie shared their experiences with the film and the real life story that inspired it.

The Paramount Pictures film is now playing in theaters nationwide.

Q: What were some of the challenges in adapting Kim Barkers book and how did you make sure not to lose this great midlife coming of age story to too many jokes?

Robert Requa: Kim’s book has a starting place, it was empowering and being able to approach this subject comically and it was a line to walk and I think Johnny & Glenn get most of the credit for figuring that out. When I was working on it people would ask what kind of feature was I working on, I would say a comedy about Afghanistan and everyone would raise an eyebrow and say good luck with that. When I talked about it with Kim Barkers friends, friends of mine that were into journalism, military or NGO workers they would tell me that they have so many hilarious stories to tell and it really helped me get my head around it. How do you walk this line? When people are people, in a place, things happen and darkly things and tragically funny things happened, they made funny things happened in heir lives, it was something I had to be mindful of all the time.

Q: Who first got the script for this film or did any one of you read the book first and who gets to decide what project you’ll direct?

Glenn Ficarra : None of us read the script nor the book (laughs) I read the script first, immediately we jumped off the page, the description of the house and already was able to tell that this isn’t a typical comedy fair, which I thought it was as it was pitched to me I could no put it down. As I got to the end I said John has to read this, it sort of has our names on it because of the balance between comedy and drama.

Q: Tina, first you deliver a terrific performance in the movie. Was it scary for you to know that this role had quite a bit of drama in it, that there wouldn’t be a joke waiting for you at the end of the dialogue and how did you find out about Kim’s story?

Tina Fey: First I found out about the book, I think it was at the Times review where someone thought this was like a Tina Fey character because I’m an egomaniac and a moron, that really spoke to me. I got a hold of the book that way. I loved it, for me when you find something like that you read a book for enjoyment is one thing and when you read a book also thinking could this be a movie? When you see moments that are fascinating and strange, funny and cinematic I hoped and thought that it should definitely be a movie. I took it to Robert Carlock and I thought would be well qualified to adapt to this project and in terms of whether it’s drama or not I thought the book is funny, I think no life experience is wholly dramatic, in real life people are living the moment in most dire situations must cope through humor. I thought there was a real honesty in the book and you hope to try to just perform honestly and whether there are jokes or not it’ll be fine.

Q: Kim, Tina Fey is playing you in a movie. What did you think about that, and what Whiskey Tango Foxtrot got right about you as a reporter?

Kim Barker: When I found out that Tina Fey was going to play me in a movie, I thought it was strange and I’m sure for those in the audience that are print journalist can relate to the fact that it’s strange and rare. It was very exciting, I met with Rob a lot, and throughout the process he was very honest with me with the likelihood of making this into a comedy made in Afghanistan not likely. John was honest with me about the process about how its not going to adhere directly to the book but his whole goal was to make it adhere to the spirit of the book and to keep my narrative ark accurate. I’ve seen it now twice, the first time I was terrified and the first time I was holding hands with my brother and he thought it’s great, It’s like Brides maids meets the Hurt Locker and I’m really pleased with it and I think it’s really accurate to my narrative arc and to the absurdity with how we lived there and to the sadness that we saw and to the war that continues on Afghanistan and the fact that it just continuous to go on and on. The one thing I like about the movie is that fact that you have this year and it’s every year rinse and repeat, it’s just going to go on and on, repeating itself and I’m really happy with it.

Q: Margot, your character Tanya is a fierce, self confident reporter, but there’s definitely a great deal of vulnerability underneath that facade. Talk about how you prepared for such a role, and working with John and Glenn again and Tina for the first time?

Margot Robbie: I was probably half way through shooting focus with John and Glen when I told them whatever project they had I want to be part of it, funny I mentioned because they had a script for me to read and I heard Tina was going to be playing the lead character. I thought what a brilliant learning experience that would be just to be able to work with someone like that would be really helpful for me. I was good to jump onboard to find Tanya, seeing in the script she was looking out for herself and I think it was important to find the vulnerable side of her for sure and I think it was important to find a genuine friendship between Tina’s character and My character. They may not have been friends in the real world I think it was very genuine over there and I think I love watching genuine friendships on screen, I love those bromances of two guys on screen or whatever the dynamic is as long as it’s genuine friendship, it’s entertaining for me despite the circumstances that they’re in. It was fun finding that, it was great to work with John and Glenn again and for the first time with Tina, I’m very lucky.

Q: John & Glenn, I was particularly impressed with the accuracy and the portrayal of the military in this film could you talk about what went in to getting that so right?

John Requa: It started with Robert, he had worked on the script and we later built on it and a lot of it had to do with a lot of connections in the military high up and down low to get amazing access, that’s really why the movie looks like it does and in many ways it’s because of our producer Ian Bryce has connections to the military.

Glenn Ficarra: This film was so daunting to write because of Kim’s experience and I had to try to get things that were very important to people, life and death stuff right. I was talking to a lot of people and a consultant would show up and say it didn’t happen that way, you later adjust and it was just effort, trying to be true to it.

Q: Tina, war comedy seemed like a dead genre despite our country being at war now for quite sometime. Talk about the movie challenges and comedy at heart that is set in a warzone and the inevitable comparison to classic comedies like M*A*S*H.

Tina Fey: At its core It’s a human story, it’s about relationships I’s not political and it’s not Dr. Strange Love. This movie is about a woman making a choice to blow up her existing life and go on this adventure for lack of a better term. For me it was about relationships and maybe it was better not knowing to know that it was a genre we were suppose to be trying to touch. It didn’t seem hard at all until when we were trying to sell it to people. Maybe we should say that the vehicles transform to robots and then they fight each other and you’ll be halfway through the film and you realize that didn’t actually happen.

Q: What was it like playing the main character and also producing this project and also what was the selection like with the music use in this movie?

Tina: To be the producer at the same time you have to work with people that you trust and are doing there jobs well enough that you are not on the day thinking about how many pages will be shot during the day.

Glenn Ficarra: As far as the music goes it was a heavy process with music supervisor we start the movie and listen to a lot of music that might be appropriate.

John Requa: None of it is appropriate, that’s the rule with music in movies you make a playlist and you listen to it you get really inspired and then try to put in the movie and it doesn’t work and then you find it when you explore. It’s a tough tone, you try to make a dromedy, you try to match comedy and drama and so you have to find the music that live somewhere in between those two worlds. Sometimes you want for it to be dramatic, sometimes you want it to be comedic it’s tough and it’s probably the best part of the postproduction is the music.

Q: Tina, what kind of responsibility did you feel you had to do with this character versus anything else you’ve ever done, outside of maybe Sarah Palin.

Tina Fey: I think the stuff that Robert and Kim talked about once you are allowing your story to be adapted this way you have to be willing to let go and say oh these two people who are very dear to me are going to be one person and the shift of making her a television reporter as appose to a print reporter, mostly I just wanted Kim to not be mad about the movie but other than that I was trying to be taller or sound exactly like her to try to find the spirit of it.

Q: Do you think the movie gives sort of a bleak view of what it takes for a woman to be a warzone reporter?

Tina Fey: I don’t think so at all, I think it points out that there’s some real absurdities to it especially in that part of the world that you could just be doing your job and someone could full tail grab your ass and it’s not that weird to punch. I don’t think it was bleak; it wasn’t like anyone was afraid to send you there or didn’t want your stories because you’re a woman.

Kim: In terms of addiction getting really in to the story over there I think its equally the same for men and women, there are some people who go from warzone to warzone and I certainly miss it every single day. It’s hard to do but it makes me feel very alive doing it. And you feel like you’re watching it history unfold right in front of you and it is a privilege to have written and covered those stories as a TV journalist and I don’t get an oblique sense of it I think it just shows how hard it is.

Desdehollywood: I enjoyed the scene between Kim and Fahim where he was implying that you’re getting very high off of the idea of living this life of constant danger. What was shooting that scene like, and did Kim finally realize that Fahim was right the entire time?

Tina Fey: Yes, I think she definitely does. I think in that moment she started suspecting that he is right. A scene like that was a pleasure to shoot because I knew that Robert had written this beautiful monologue for Chris Abbott and Chris is so good and as the other actor in that scene and all you have to do is listen to him and react to him and he’s doing such beautiful work and the words are so great, it was a great scene to shoot for me because he’s doing all of the heavy lifting and doing such a good job so I think it’s one of my favorite scenes in the movie also and yeah it really summoning up a lot of what the movies about, it’s like your are getting addicted to this lifestyle and it’s dangerous and I don’t want to be a part of his anymore, yeah he’s really good.

Q: Margot, I know that you’ve traveled a lot and you’ve been quoted saying you love going to hostels sort of anonymousl. As a person who travels a lot what was the most important thing you learned about working on this movie?

Margot Robbie: I love traveling, I like immersing myself in a different culture and I feel like you can get to do that more when you stay at hostels and when you’re in a hotel they kind of look the same to an extent that’s the way I like to travel, as for becoming desensitized to your surroundings I think that it applicable for a lot of occupations and I’d hate to draw any comparisons between being and actor and a war correspondent because I think there are worlds apart. I do think the metaphor of the whole frog in a boiling pot is very applicable to a lot of occupations and yeah I think it’s definitely prevalent, it’s easy to lose sense of reality when you get caught in something that’s such an adrenaline rush sometimes.

Tina Fey: I think with actors it’s at a smaller scale, so much less important, it’s like I’m in the middle of this project I cant go to my cousins wedding, I’m in the middle of this project, thank god I don’t get addicted to that feeling of feeling very special and important right now (laughs).

Q: This movie has some interesting things to say about being a Western woman in the Middle East and there’s that terrific line of “now you’re in the purple prison” when you wear the burka dress. I wonder what you guys can say about that?

Tina Fey: We did not really travel to Asia or the Middle East at all, we were guessing what it felt like, Kim should answer more what it felt like being a Western woman over there. I’m always fascinated with the idea of he journalist playing along and wearing the headscarf.

Kim Barker: It’s a direct quote from the book, I always have to say that Afghanistan is in Asia and not the Middle East it always gets conflated, and they’re very different cultures. When I first went over there I had to bring contact lenses because I have blue eyes, it’s what makes me look like a westerner and I’m 5 ft. 10 inches tall and I had to blend in, there’s no blending in right. If I was wearing a burka I could blend in and so a lot of times traveling around that’s what I would wear so that no one would notice us, we would travel around in beat up Toyota Corollas outside the cities, we did not have security, it was about trying to look like locals and not raising anyone’s attention. There were times when you would wear these things and feel very constricted but then there was a freeing sense to it as well because for the first time you’re wearing something that’s completely invisible and no one is staring at you, no one is trying to take your picture or pinch you, you feel more relaxed and I did not mind that feeling and it sort of reminds you how lucky we are to be born here, as women we are very lucky to be born here and I don’t think it’s something we think about enough.

Q: Tina and Margot what did you find most challenging about your characters at a personal level?

Tina Fey: The most challenging thing for me would be trying to pretend we were there because to really try to imagine the feeling of danger because we were in New Mexico, in the U.S. to try to do that, it was there and the characters were so well drawn, that for me was the biggest challenge.

Margot Robbie: I agree, it was difficult having no exposure to what it would be like, to be a war correspondent. I did a lot of reading on stuff that wasn’t necessarily in the script such as the stuff that would happen to reporters over there just so that I can recognize the stakes that were over there and trying to bring that fear to a scene and it’s not all fun and games. I tried to read about it so that I can get a grasp of the stakes, I think with the actual character story lines I think a lot of the things that people experience, you can draw on your own experiences for that but definitely not being there was actually difficult and not feeling the imminent danger there would have been.

John Requa: I think the hardest thing for the project was recreating the city in New Mexico and just the huge task of creating a city and the country was really daunting, we were trying to do it in a convincing way, when the actors came on set were like ok it looks a lot easier for them to imagine and be immersed in that world. I was a big task and we wanted to build it for real, there are a lot of digital tricks in the movie but there are also a lot of giant sets built as well and we did not have a lot of money and time but we felt like it was important to actually have the actors go in to places that were real and completely immersive and I think that’s what nearly killed us and it wasn’t a big budgeted film.

Glenn Ficarra: As Kim mentioned her real life narrative arc earlier was the biggest challenge in writing it and adapting it was the spying and that was the truth for this thing, then trying to figure out how to take this beautiful, funny book that reflects real life and be true to all of that while giving up the kind of moments that require narratively and all that stuff, that would make Kim furious at me.

Q: Kim I know you wrote this code of silence for journalism and encountering sexual harassment. I was wondering if that’s something that you noticed the situation has improved for journalist now, and to Margot and Tina, what can you say about that?

Kim Barker: I haven’t been overseas since I came back but I think that what has changed since there’s been a lot more attention about it for a large part was while Lara Logan was so brave to talk about what happened to her and I think Lynsey Addario talked about it, even male journalist talked about it and I think a lot more people are talking about it and the fear in talking about it in the first place is does that mean that I’m not as tough, does it mean that my editor is not going to send me over seas? Or say you want to come back here for a hug? If you are over seas you got to feel like taking care of everything your self and you don’t want to complain back home because there’s a line of people that would like to come out the door and do the job you are doing. You talk to other reporters and there’s the black humor thing so I think what’s happened and Lauren Wolf has done a lot of work on this as well and people are talking about it. I think it’s only a good thing if people are talking about it and everyone should remember we are their foreign reporters with the local reporters they obviously suffer much more and you are talking about men and women and I always like to pint that out.

Margot Robbie: I was fortunate; I’ve got a really good team around me. I haven’t been exploited I think it’s as much the perception and the persona to the masses it is to the people that you’re immediately surrounded by and I think I feel more concerned with being labeled as a sex symbol to everyone, I feel like that makes me feel more uncomfortable than any day to day interactions I’ve ever had.

Tina Fey: Like Kim said we were really lucky to be born here, mild complaints in the United States.

Q: Kim, Could you address the covering of the war versus becoming a part of it and what that’s like to be affected by it directly as suppose to just being a reporter on it? Tina doing this project specifically changed your point of view on political comedy at all and how do you approach it?

Tina Fey: I don’t think of this film as a political comedy, it’s more human story than that but I think with the same things apply that you want to try to get the facts and background right whether it’s a political sketch or this movie and you want to feel like any observations or jokes you are making are called a fair hit and they rain through in some way and beyond that it is what it is.

Kim Barker: I would say that any time that the difference between covering a war and being in there, sort of being part of it is if in you’re in DC you are covering a war, if you are outside the zone you are covering, if you parachuted and do an embed near you’re sort of like covering it but if you are based over there you are living it there’s no one who is based over there and is not living it because you are essentially living it 24 hours a day, you see this in the movie. You’re at a party, there’s a boom everyone starts working, everyone stops and it happened quite often or you’d be at a dinner and all of a sudden one person would get a call and it would slink away and the next person would get a call and you’d be sitting there not getting the call wondering what was going on so if you are there you are in it and I don’t know if you can have an affect on the difference of the war or anything like that, it seemed to me that being over there the stories coming out of DC about what was happening in Afghanistan and Pakistan would be dead wrong taking this conventional wisdom because they were being written out of the capital as appose to what we were seeing happen on the ground, that was one of the reasons why I had to write the book.

Desdehollywood: Margot, what was it like preparing for the role of Tanya and also working on Suicide Squad, did you work on both of the projects around the same time frame?

Margot Robbie: Yeah, I was on a press tour for “Focus” while shooting Whiskey “Tango Fox Trot” and I was training for Suicide Squad at the same. There would be pretty long days on set and I would train and I wrapped on weekends and fly out to the press tour.

Q: What’s fiction and non-fiction from the movie?

Glenn: I think I said this to Kim in some meeting, she knew I would combine people or get rid of Pakistan from the story. One of the things I said to her was Attorney general of Afghanistan has a crush on your Main character, that cant be just a funny condition, that has to happen narratively and those things did happen the bed scene not with Kim but he did famously dance at a party, It was his sort of political undoing, I can use that real thing, and how does she use him at the end and use that affection, that’s not something our real Kim do was manipulating the attorney General of Afghanistan.

Kim Barker: I spoke with a lot of my friend who’ve written novels and later became films had suggest for me to sign it and see what the production company does with this story and if they need your help offer your help but you cant get too wrapped up in it, at my job I can only control the things that I can control. While they were doing this I was still a reporter and doing actual stories and focusing on that and trusting the team would do a really good job.

Q: Pakistan was completely taken off of the movie can you talk a little bit about the decision process behind that, was it just simplifying the narrative or were there other decisions behind it?

Glenn Ficarra: Yes, it was about simplifying the narratives and to me as a dumb American Afghanistan I can get my mind around I did a lot of reading about Pakistan and thought it was even more complicating is fair to say, our allies who are also funding and the worst frenemy in the world but a movie that about a woman going through a personal journey it fell away immediately unfortunately.

Q: What was it like working with Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Freeman and the rest of the cast?

Tina Fey: For me it’s an educational experience and to get to work with Martin, Alfred, Billy Bob and Margot who I really admire in other roles you just try to keep up with them. It like playing tennis and you try to be a better player, you hope that your game comes up a little bit

Margot Robbie: It was hilarious; I remember we would do takes and I would blightingly be pissing myself, laughing and they couldn’t use any of my coverage because I was laughing at everyone else, there’s a lot of improvised stuff which unfortunately didn’t make the cut, I wish you guys could have seen it but you can take my word for it, it was hilarious.

Q: What attracted to this role Margot, especially as a female character with some negative characteristics?

Margot Robbie: Like I said earlier the most important thing for me was to find a genuine friendship between them and that kind of made everything a little easier after that she’s obviously an opinionative character. I think when there is something genuine about what you are trying to portray it doesn’t matter as much, it’s not necessarily a positive thing you are trying to portray as long as it’s genuine. I thought Tanya was a strong character whether they are right or wrong, good or bad. It’s always easier to play a strong character that has an opinion on something’s and like I said I was excited to work with everyone sitting at this table and doing something a little different.

Q: Kim, what did it take to be a war reporter, is it courage and what are the characteristics?

Kim Barker: I don’t see myself as particularly brave; when I grew up I was scared of everything. I think it takes curiosity and the desire to challenge yourself to do things that really scare you but primarily curiosity about the world and about seeing history again and unfold right in front of you and bravery sort of just follows behind like about six steps going what the hell did you do to us. I went to Pakistan and Afghanistan before I ever went to Europe, I was not traveled at all and I didn’t know what I was getting into at all, maybe that’s the key to being a foreign correspondent, have no knowledge of where you’re going (Laughs) wing it from there.

WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT is now playing in theaters nationwide.