There’s a surprisingly clean dividing line in Margot Robbie’s career: before Whiskey Tango Foxtrot and after it. Though not nearly as many people saw the 2016 film as her most recent string of hits, this obscure Tina Fey-led war dramedy marks the point of no return for Robbie. Before its release, she was an actor too good to be stuck with such middling studio projects as Focus. Following her exceptional role in Martin Scorsese’s 2013 smash The Wolf of Wall Street, Robbie was failing to find anything with that sort of texture and unpredictability. But after Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Robbie just so happened to become something else entirely: The full-fledged Hollywood brand we see her as today.
That transformation brought massive hits perfectly tuned to her skillset, such as must-watches I, Tonya and Barbie. But it also pushed her into a cycle of oversized productions like Suicide Squad and <em>The Legend of Tarzan</em> and prestige swings like Babylon and <em>Amsterdam</em> that rarely use her as effectively as they should. That’s part of what makes Whiskey Tango Foxtrot feel like such a curio in retrospect. Released what feels like seconds before Robbie’s final ascent to superstardom, the film captures one of the last times she was allowed to simply disappear into a sharply written role rather than carry the weight of franchise expectations or awards-season narratives.
‘Whiskey Tango Foxtrot’ Lets Margot Robbie Play Against Her Modern Star Persona
Despite modestly positive reviews and a solid ensemble cast, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot has pretty much disappeared from everyone’s mind. A decade later, though, it plays as a reminder of what Robbie’s career used to look like before every project became an event. The film follows a dedicated journalist played by Tina Fey. After growing frustrated with her stagnant New York career, she volunteers for an overseas assignment covering the war in Afghanistan. Pulling from real-life journalist Kim Barker’s memoir The Taliban Shuffle, the film exists in a strange tonal middle ground between newsroom satire, fish-out-of-water story, and 21st-century war comedy. Yet no matter what’s going on with the tone, the movie finds a way to become more compelling whenever Robbie’s on-screen.
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Robbie’s career has been ‘A Big Bold Beautiful Journey’ so far.
She’s playing Tanya Vanderpoel, a larger-than-life correspondent from the BBC who never turns down a drink and chases danger like it’s her literal job. In another actor’s hands, the role could’ve easily become cartoonish (if not downright annoying). But instead, Robbie never loses sight of the human element. She plays Tanya in such a way that you can sense the exhaustion and loneliness underneath the facade. It’s so far from the modern Margot Robbie role — heightened accents, exaggerated physical comedy, lavish costumes, capital-A Acting — that you’d hardly be able to tell she was about to blow up.
‘Whiskey Tango Foxtrot’ Was One of the Last Mid-Budget Movies of Margot Robbie’s Career
Image via Paramount Pictures
Made for around $35 million, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is part of the increasingly endangered middle ground of Hollywood filmmaking. It’s too expensive to be considered indie cinema but far too modest to qualify as modern blockbuster entertainment. By the mid-2010s, studios were already beginning to abandon this space, prioritizing either ultra-cheap genre fare or gigantic franchise properties instead. Robbie’s career mirrors that industry shift almost perfectly.
In 2016, she still had one foot in both worlds. Later that same year was her first appearance as Harley Quinn, not to mention her part as Jane in the failed franchise non-starter The Legend of Tarzan. Suicide Squad turned out to be the one that permanently transformed her into IP royalty. From that point forward, her filmography has been almost all huge swings… some successful, some sorry attempts at Oscar bait, but almost always oversized productions far from her more grounded roots.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot isn’t perfect. It has a pretty narrow perspective on the Middle East and a tendency to soften the uglier realities of war with lame jokes. But even its messiness is a far cry from the hyper-calculated, focus-grouped studio vehicles that would soon dominate Robbie’s career. Viewed today, it’s a snapshot of the moment just before she became one of the biggest stars in the world — back when she still had room to disappear into a mid-budget adult drama instead of carrying billion-dollar expectations on her back.
