“I became interested in this reverse concept of simmer then boil – walking into love and not falling into love,” says Khan, having witnessed first hand arranged marriages in Pakistan.Credit: Getty Images
Jemima Khan has squeezed a lot into her 48 years. Born to British aristocracy, she was just 21 when she turned her back on hobnobbing with the likes of Princess Diana to marry former Pakistani cricketer Imran Khan and move to his home country (he later became Pakistan’s prime minister between 2018 and 2022).
When the marriage ended in 2004, Khan returned to the UK, where she continued to focus on her work as a journalist. The mother of two has since founded Instinct Productions and is working on films and documentaries.
Khan says an assisted marriage “could have saved me a lot of headaches and heartaches”.Credit: Getty Images
How did the idea to write What’s Love Got to Do with It, a film about arranged marriage, come about?
The movie was inspired by 10 years of living in Lahore, Pakistan – it’s not autobiographical though! But when I did go there, I had all the usual preconceptions that people like me have around arranged marriages, with no up-close experience of seeing any arranged marriages in action. It struck me as a fun way to tell a love story.
Describe your experience of living in Pakistan between 1995 and 2004.
I lived with my ex-husband’s family. They were very conservative and we lived in a segregated household for men and women. Imran and I were the only love marriage in the family’s history – there may have been one other, but ours was the only divorce.
I lived with Imran’s niece Hadra and an entire extended family for the first five years. Hadra was 13 when I first went to Pakistan and I saw her enter an arranged marriage aged 20. One of the lines in my film comes directly from her. It’s where her mother says to her “I want you to choose” – referring to a future husband. Hadra said to me, “Why don’t you choose for me, so I have someone to blame if it doesn’t work out.”
Do you think arranged marriages are a good idea?
The majority I saw were happy and long-lasting and developed into what I saw as genuine love. I became interested in this reverse concept of simmer then boil – walking into love and not falling into love. When I came back to the UK after being in Pakistan, I was 30 and some of my friends were in their mid-30s and looking for someone to have children with. They wanted to either get married or have kids, or both. When they struggled to find suitable candidates for the role, it started as a joke between us – that I would help them because in Pakistan I helped arrange a few marriages.
Emma Thompson and Lily James star in the new romantic comedy, What’s Love Got to Do With It?
Do you think you would have found happiness in an arranged marriage?
An assisted marriage may have been a good solution if my parents could agree, which I doubt would be possible. Had they been in agreement, then yes, it could have saved me a lot of headaches and heartaches.
What has love taught you about yourself?
I’ve learnt there are different types – there’s passionate love and companionate love, the love that comes from friendship and family. We can be overly focused on romantic love in a way that can overshadow other kinds.
What did you love most about Pakistan?
The people, and the friends I made. If you take away the politics and the media – which was challenging for me – and talk about day-to-day life and my ex-husband’s family, then I experienced nothing but warmth, hospitality and love and that is what I wanted to convey when making the film. In the West, our screens tend to focus on a more hostile Pakistan. I don’t think people are very familiar with a fun Pakistan.
Your two sons are now in their 20s. Do you have more time to focus on your career as a result?
I like to fill the void that now exists because my children are independent and have both finished university. If anything, I use work to distract me from the loss of my children, from living with them all the time and being fully in my life.
You worked as a journalist prior to starting your production company. Was that transition difficult?
It took 10 years to learn how to write a script and get it film-ready. A lot of the stories I’ve chosen are true-life ones, from Impeachment, the Monica Lewinsky story, and The Clinton Affair, to the series The Case Against Adnan Syed – about a Pakistani Muslim kid who was the same age as one of my sons when I started working on it.
You had your own fashion label – Jemima Khan Designs – while in Lahore. Is this something you’d revive?
It was a great thing to do, and it helped employ 500 women who lived in a village near me – they would hand-embroider clothes for the Western market with traditional Pakistani embroidery. It was fun, but no I wouldn’t work in that industry again.
Will you write a memoir one day?
Let me come back to you after I have spoken to everyone in my life [smiles], as the people who’d be in it might be annoyed. But watch this space.
What’s Love Got to Do with It is in cinemas now.
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