Sneak peek: Tina Fey goes to war in 'Whiskey Tango Foxtrot'

Every war gets its own comedy, and so Tina Fey is heading to Afghanistan — at least on the big screen.

Directed by the team of Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (Crazy, Stupid, Love), the dramedy Whiskey Tango Foxtrot stars Fey as a journalist who’s sent to Kabul on assignment and gets entrenched in a culture of adrenaline and parties. The film (in theaters March 4) is an adaptation of Kim Barker’s 2011 memoir The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan by Fey’s longtime writing collaborator Robert Carlock.

“For me to get to do a movie where I fly in helicopters and shoot guns and run from explosions, that’s a treat,” Fey says. “I don’t get to do any of those things on a daily basis.”

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The real-life Barker was working for The Chicago Tribune in the 2000s, but Fey’s Kim Baker was changed to a cable-news reporter to make that aspect of the plot more visual. “Fewer shots of people typing, and then people reading what they type,” the actress jokes.

But the wild nights and zoo atmosphere of the ramshackle place Barker stayed at in Kabul is reflected in the movie, as are the litany of bizarre things that happened to her. Fey’s character makes a connection on her first embed with Marines, and local Afghan leaders become enamored with her, asking Kim to be their “special friend.”

Fey describes the term “Kabul cute” as “the idea when a regular normal-looking woman goes into a place where there aren’t very many women. She becomes a real object of desire in a way that is hopefully comical.”

Margot Robbie co-stars as Tanya Vanderpoel, a British TV journalist whom Kim admires and befriends, Christopher Abbot plays Afghan “fixer” Fahim Ahmadzai, who acts as driver, translator and all-around handyman for reporters, and Martin Freeman is Iain MacKelpie, a Scottish war photographer who’s introduced to Kim as a guy she shouldn’t fall for “and of course you can probably guess what happens then,” Fey says.

Rounding out the ensemble cast is Billy Bob Thornton as Gen. Hollanek, a military man who initially scares Kim, and Alfred Molina is a local official who has a crush on her “and doesn’t have the best boundaries with that,” Fey says. “He takes me out back to teach me how to shoot rifles and stuff as a way of wooing me.”

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There was too much unrest in Afghanistan to actually film Whiskey there, so “we shot in the domestic Middle East, which is New Mexico,” Fey adds with a laugh. She did actually get to fly in an Air Force Huey helicopter, however: “It couldn’t have been a more thrilling experience.”

Carlock wanted to capture a tone that was reminiscent of two 1970 films, Robert Altman’s Korean War-centric M*A*S*H and Mike Nichols’ World War II movie Catch-22 — “touchstones that dealt with horror and absurdity at the same time,” says the screenwriter.

One thing Fey fans will see in the new film is how she navigates the acting minefields of dramatic intensity and hilarious moments, Carlock says. Barker’s original prose had a toughness, intelligence and sense of humor that sounded a lot like Fey to him.

“She’s funny and daring in her life, and so is Kim in hers,” Carlock says. “I don’t know if Tina would jump at going to Kabul tomorrow, but anyone in (show) business takes certain risks with their life.”

Fey doesn't consider Whiskey Tango Foxtrot a political movie, and there’s no stance taken on what America should or shouldn’t be doing in Afghanistan. However, she says, “it does make the point that people have been going to this part of the world trying to fix it for 1,000 years, and it is what it is. No one’s ever going to get a handle on (it)."

What she identified with more was the thought of a working woman going to a place with no rules, getting addicted to a nutty lifestyle and finding a way to live a normal life again.

“I’m not supposed to be on SNL, I’m not supposed to be here making this movie. I should just be in suburban Pennsylvania being a high school teacher,” the actress says. “The idea of someone having a very large life experience that no one would have expected was something very easy for me to connect with.”