Jemima Khan: Charles and Diana’s marriage was arranged

You’re already a producer and journalist, why add screenwriter for the romcom What’s Love Got To Do With It? to your bow?

I’m a lunatic, probably! It was the hardest thing ever. I hadn’t learned screenwriting. I had a very kind friend, Ol Parker, who wrote Mamma Mia!, who basically read every draft for me. He would mostly write things like ‘do better!’, but he was a brilliant teacher and I wouldn’t have been able to make it without his help.

It stars Lily James and is about modern Pakistani arranged marriages. Do you think arranged marriages can work?

From the age of 20 to 30 I was living in my then husband’s [Imran Khan] family home with his sisters, his father, his sisters’ husbands and their kids. And it was quite a conservative family.

We were the only non-arranged marriage in that family – ever. And I went in thinking, well, ‘that’s insane’ and that arranged marriages were this mad, completely outdated, virtually medieval concept.

But watching these arranged marriages at all ends of the spectrum, you really get to see how they work. And then seeing the next generation of arranged marriages, which I ended up getting involved in the selection process of, by virtue of being part of the household committee, I came away with a really different view. And it wasn’t a dismissive one.

Might you ever have considered an arranged marriage yourself?

I genuinely think that if my parents had been kind of sane and able to agree on things, it might have been an interesting thing to have seen who they might have suggested as possible marriage candidates.

That was kind of the premise for the film, in a way. It was like, you know, what would happen if a character like Lily James, this ambitious twentysomething film-maker, turned to her mother [played by Emma Thompson] and said, ‘OK, I haven’t had much success so far. Who do you want me to give it a go with?’

Who do you think your parents would have chosen?

I dread to think! I mean, I really dread to think. I don’t think that my parents [Lady Annabel Vane-Tempest-Stewart and financier Sir James Goldsmith] would have been able to sit on the same committee, because they had very different backgrounds. They had both eloped when they got married, against their parents’ wishes. I come from a long line in unsuitable matches.

You got married young…

I was 21 when I married. I was in my second year at university. I mean, it’s a hard choice to rationalise now! I wouldn’t really want my children to get married before they were in their 30s.

You’re divorced now but are you still a romantic?

I’m both a romantic and cynic. I think I’ve been sort of irreparably ruined by romcoms. I was indoctrinated by this idea of a kind of mythologised love at first sight, a sort of all-consuming, passionate, romantic love.

Your fave romcom?

I mean, Richard Curtis is the absolute master of making you care while also making you laugh. But Nora Ephron is the queen of romcoms, isn’t she? When Harry Met Sally is up there.

Did you almost call your romcom after King Charles’ infamous quote – ‘Whatever love means’

I lobbied hard for it. But it was considered a little too unenthusiastic! I use the quote in the film to make the point that there’s a tendency, from people outside of that culture, to be quite judgemental about arranged marriages, when actually it’s really not very long ago that our royal family would have arranged marriages. For all intents and purposes, Charles and Diana’s marriage was arranged.

Do you have sympathy with Prince Harry’s criticism of the way royal brides are treated?

I haven’t actually read his book or seen any of the interviews because I’ve been so busy with all of this.

You were close friends with Princess Diana, what’s the most authentic on-screen portrayal of Diana that you’ve seen?

I’m not sure. I haven’t even watched the documentaries that have come out recently. It’s kind of weird seeing someone who you knew and were close to depicted on screen.

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