Tina Fey responds to race row over new film Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

TINA Fey’s new film features two white actors in Middle Eastern roles — but she says she feels ‘warm’ about the casting decision.

TINA Fey has responded to the growing disquiet about the casting of white actors in Afghani roles in her new film Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

Fey stars in and also produced the war comedy, which tells the real-life story of a female American journalist sent to work in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the early 2000s.

Tina Fey portrays Kim Baker in a scene from Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. Picture: AP

Among a cast including Billy Bob Thornton and Australia’s own Margot Robbie and Steve Peacocke, British actor Alfred Molina and American Christopher Abbott play an Afghan official and Afghan fixer respectively.

Molina is half-Spanish and half-Italian; Abbott is Eastern European and Portuguese.

“John and Glenn, the directors, would go, and they had sessions for all the parts in the film,” Fey said. “They would see, I presume, dozens and dozens of actors. And when it came to the role of Fahim [Abbott], and to Sadiq [Molina], I said to them, ‘Guys, I beg you to be thorough. And I beg you to please look, to find an Afghan person if you can’. And then I came in towards the end, and I would read with the two or three finalists for these major roles. And, y’know, it came down to it, and there were two guys up for the role of Fahim, and Chris Abbott won the role, he won it fair and square …” she told a panel this week while discussing the film.

Alfred Molina.

Christopher Abbott. Picture: Getty

“And it’s not to say that that person isn’t out there, obviously, of course there is a person of that ethnicity who could play that part. But in 2015, in the pool of actors in New York City that [casting director] Bernie Telsey very, very diligently searched through, these were the best people for the role. And I did say to John and Glenn, ‘Guys, I hope you’re sure, because I’m telling you, a year from now, the only person who will get in trouble for this is me. Because that’s what I do for a living, is get in trouble on the internet’.

“I try to make myself feel warm about it in the fact that, y’know, Afghans are caucasians, it’s caucasians playing caucasians. If you really wanted to go to the mat on it, you could say it’s not any different than, y’know, an Aussie playing a Brit, although I’m sure people feel that it is.”

The backlash comes amid a similar furore over Middle Eastern epic Gods Of Egypt, with the director of that film apologising in advance for ‘whitewashing’ in his casting choices.