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Speaker 1: Jersey and Amanda gem Nation.

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Speaker 2: Our next guest is one of the most intriguing people

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Speaker 2: I think you'd meet. She's an ambassador for UNISSEEF doing

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Speaker 2: countless aid work around the world, particularly in Pakistan and

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Speaker 2: the Middle East.

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Speaker 3: She's worked for Vogue, She's.

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Speaker 2: Been at the Helm of Vanity Fair, and she looms

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Speaker 2: large in film and TV, having produced Emmy and Golden

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Speaker 2: Globe nominated shows. She's recently written a fabulous film that

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Speaker 2: I saw last night called What's Love Got to Do

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Speaker 2: with Us?

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Speaker 3: What's Love Got to Do with It?

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Speaker 2: She joins us now, Jamima Kahn, Hello, thank you.

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Speaker 3: So much for having me Ona.

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Speaker 1: That's quite the resume.

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Speaker 2: It's quite the resume.

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Speaker 3: It's varied, hugely varied.

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Speaker 2: And we'll start with the film, which is so interesting.

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Speaker 2: It's the story of an English girl growing up next

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Speaker 2: door to her well her English neighbour who's of Pakistan descent,

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Speaker 2: and he decides they're great friends. He decides it's time

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Speaker 2: to get married and chooses something to please his parents,

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Speaker 2: the assisted married route as it were.

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Speaker 4: Yes Yes Please, played by Chazzad Latif and Lily James,

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Speaker 4: who in real life are great friends. And I think

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Speaker 4: hopefully they're kind of easy chemistry shows on screen. But yeah,

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Speaker 4: it's it's sort of based on my experiences of living

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Speaker 4: in my ex husband's extended family household with his father,

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Speaker 4: his sisters, their husbands, their children, my children. Has ever

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Speaker 4: had twenty of us in one house, and ours was

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Speaker 4: the only non arranged marriage. Everybody else had had an

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Speaker 4: arranged marriage in the whole history of his family, and

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Speaker 4: OZ was the only non arranged what they call love

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Speaker 4: marriage and the holy divorce. So I came back, you know,

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Speaker 4: with one view of arrange I came back. I went

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Speaker 4: there with one view of arranged marriage, and I came

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Speaker 4: back kind of questioning some of those preconceptions and having

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Speaker 4: seen some quite happy ones.

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Speaker 1: So statistically, would you say that arranged marriages, even by

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Speaker 1: your own account, the they.

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Speaker 4: Work as far as when it comes to divorce, I mean,

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Speaker 4: statistically for sure, I mean that they're sort of it's

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Speaker 4: it's incontrovertible that they do. But I guess you can,

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Speaker 4: you know, you can factor in you know, stigma, social stigmas.

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Speaker 3: Et cetera.

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Speaker 2: Doesn't happiness.

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Speaker 4: My experience, sort of my anecdotal experiences, is when it's

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Speaker 4: a consensual arrangement and it's based on basically the modern

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Speaker 4: take on it, the assisted marriage. It's an introduction by

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Speaker 4: the people who know you and love you most and

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Speaker 4: in the in in you know, when you live with somebody,

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Speaker 4: you see things pretty up close.

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Speaker 3: Its kind of hard to hide.

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Speaker 4: And those marriages that I saw, long term marriages and

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Speaker 4: the ones that were being arranged whilst I was there,

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Speaker 4: actually were remarkably successful and happy.

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Speaker 3: It's just a different thing.

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Speaker 4: It's you know the concept of simmer then boil, or

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Speaker 4: you don't start with love, you end with love, and

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Speaker 4: that sort of balance between the kind of pragmatism and

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Speaker 4: passion on sort of rom com love. And it's just

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Speaker 4: a way of looking at it. And it definitely caused

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Speaker 4: me to kind of reconsider. And when I came back

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Speaker 4: to London and I had my single girlfriends in their thirties,

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Speaker 4: one in kids and slightly thinking about, you know, is

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Speaker 4: now the time and we would have this conversation if

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Speaker 4: you had you know, if you had, say, in functional parents,

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Speaker 4: who would who might say which we don't all have

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Speaker 4: no finger pointing here, you know, who would your parents

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Speaker 4: choose for you?

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Speaker 3: And and what would that look like? Would it work?

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Speaker 2: And it's yeah, well, you were twenty when you married

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Speaker 2: in ran Khan and moved to Pakistan. What a fish

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Speaker 2: out of water story from quite a privileged upbringing. How

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Speaker 2: did his family greet you? As you say, you were

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Speaker 2: the first non arranged marriage in his family in his history.

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Speaker 3: I mean, honestly, I think they were horrified.

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Speaker 4: To begin with, he had an old his his Hala,

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Speaker 4: which means old art. It means his aunt, who I

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Speaker 4: based the grandmother character a little bit on.

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Speaker 3: And I never forget. We used to everyone lived in

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Speaker 3: the same.

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Speaker 4: Kind of square called Zaman Park, and I used to

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Speaker 4: go and see in about six months in she refused

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Speaker 4: to speak English. You speaking or do? And she said,

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Speaker 4: They said, oh, Hala was very shocked when she heard

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Speaker 4: about him marrying out, and you know, and she just

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Speaker 4: very quietly said, who said, I'm over the shock.

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Speaker 3: And so it was. It was considered quite shocking.

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Speaker 4: It was almost I think they were more shocked than

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Speaker 4: my family because I come from a very long line

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Speaker 4: in unsuitable matches. I mean, both my parents eloped against

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Speaker 4: their parents' wishes when they first got married. So I

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Speaker 4: think they were like, oh God, here we go again.

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Speaker 4: But for my ex husband's family, it was definitely very shocking.

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Speaker 2: And yet you did the hard yards you learned or

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Speaker 2: do you lived as other Pakistani women were living, as

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Speaker 2: you say, in that compound with the extended family. Did

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Speaker 2: that earn their respect eventually?

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Speaker 3: I think so? Yeah, I think I actually did.

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Speaker 4: Used to have Pakistani women coming up to me going,

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Speaker 4: no Pakistani bride would do this, what are you doing?

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Speaker 4: Because you know times are changing and you know people

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Speaker 4: are you know, it tends the joint family system is

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Speaker 4: not so sort of it's not such a kind of

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Speaker 4: hard and fast rule now. But look, I'm still really

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Speaker 4: connected with Pakistan's half Pakistani kids.

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Speaker 3: I lived there.

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Speaker 4: I feel like I kind of grew up there from

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Speaker 4: twenty to thirty, and I get a lot of the

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Speaker 4: very I get a lot of love and affection from Pakistan.

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Speaker 4: Weirdly so much.

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Speaker 2: You know.

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Speaker 3: It's a long time that I.

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Speaker 4: Ago that I left, but I do, Yeah, seem to

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Speaker 4: still have a connection with the country, and even when

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Speaker 4: I find it maddening, particularly the politics. It's a bit

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Speaker 4: like you know a relative of yours where you can

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Speaker 4: slag it off, but if someone else does, then you

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Speaker 4: go you defend it.

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Speaker 1: Because the politics are complex.

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Speaker 4: Aren't they they are complex. That is an extremely neat

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Speaker 4: way of summing it up.

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Speaker 2: There's an interesting scene in the film where Zoe's character

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Speaker 2: is making a documentary or a film about her best

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Speaker 2: friend who's getting having this arranged marriage, and she said

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Speaker 2: to him, once he's chosen his bride, she said, well,

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Speaker 2: are you happy? Are you in love? And he said

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Speaker 2: something like yes, whatever that means. And even within your

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Speaker 2: film you reference that that's a line that Prince Charles

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Speaker 2: said in his engagement to Diana. And they say, gee,

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Speaker 2: that wasn't a great portant.

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Speaker 3: And then they also.

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Speaker 2: Speak about how Diana was involved then with a Muslim doctor.

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Speaker 2: I know she was a great friend of yours. She

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Speaker 2: seems like quite an inspiration for some of these parts

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Speaker 2: of the film.

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Speaker 3: Well.

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Speaker 4: I referenced that for a particular reason, mainly to show

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Speaker 4: not only as a kind of slight little tribute to

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Speaker 4: my friend who came to Pakistan twice in the last

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Speaker 4: year that she was alive and visited me. Then she

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Speaker 4: stayed in our dressing room. She was really un home maintenance.

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Speaker 4: She shared a bathroom with us and slept in the

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Speaker 4: dressing room which she came to stay. Yet that big

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Speaker 4: was the house It was a big house, but each

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Speaker 4: basically each family had a bedroom and a bathroom, and

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Speaker 4: we had a dressing room as well, and she slept

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Speaker 4: in the dressing room and we were constantly kind of

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Speaker 4: walk in a way.

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Speaker 3: Was walking in well, she was a poor woman sleep.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, And so I sort of that was a nod

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Speaker 4: to our to her and how much love there is

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Speaker 4: for her in Pakistan because she did a lot of

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Speaker 4: charity work there, particularly with my ex husband's cancer hospital.

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Speaker 4: So she was quite she became quite well known in

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Speaker 4: Pakistan just before she died and she went out with

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Speaker 4: she was in a relationship with Hasnat Khan, who was

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Speaker 4: vague a distant cousin of my ex husbands. But also

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Speaker 4: the point I was making with the whatever love means

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Speaker 4: comment was that arranged marriage is it may feel like

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Speaker 4: an alien concept to us, but it's only one generation

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Speaker 4: back that like the British Royal family were engaging in

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Speaker 4: arranged marriages, that that was an arranged marriage to all

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Speaker 4: intentsive purposes. And you know the majority of marriages in

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Speaker 4: the world, if you look at globally, or arranged.

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Speaker 3: So I know that we have quite a kind of

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Speaker 3: we have a.

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Speaker 4: Particular view and often arranged marriage gets conflated with forced

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Speaker 4: marriage and wrongly. But so it was a bit about

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Speaker 4: kind of deep bunking this idea that it's this outlandish,

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Speaker 4: this outlandish tradition.

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Speaker 1: Because we look at it as Western as we look

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Speaker 1: at it, and it's crazy. But then on TV we

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Speaker 1: have a show called merrit at First Sight, Well yeah,

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Speaker 1: where people are getting married and they haven't even set

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Speaker 1: eyes on each other, but now they do it for

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Speaker 1: other reasons and it's pretty much more about getting influencer

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Speaker 1: takes on Instagram.

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Speaker 4: Well, actually, the one the show that for me is

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Speaker 4: the reality show that for me seems more similar as

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Speaker 4: Love is Blind Wall That feels a little bit more

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Speaker 4: like a arranged marriage because it's that show where they

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Speaker 4: don't get to see each other and they're behind a wall,

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Speaker 4: but they have to kind of see if they're compatible

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Speaker 4: without the sort of sexual chemistry getting in the way,

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Speaker 4: and then they only get to see each other once

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Speaker 4: they've had a certain amount of conversations and decided they're

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Speaker 4: in love. And that there's something kind of interesting about

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Speaker 4: taking out confusing sexual attraction, which hopefully, you know, the

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Speaker 4: point of view is, you know, is that that will

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Speaker 4: come later fully, but you have to set up the

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Speaker 4: proper building blocks first.

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Speaker 1: So when does this sexual chemistry?

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Speaker 3: When does it kick in?

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Speaker 1: For thirty years? I'm just can you give me a

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Speaker 1: like a when does that happen?

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Speaker 4: Listen, we've all been ruined by rom coms. Let's say

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Speaker 4: I definitely have.

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Speaker 3: I have just as much as the next person.

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Speaker 1: Well, Jemimah, it's so great to talk to you. What's

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Speaker 1: Love Got to do with It is in cinemas this Thursday,

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Speaker 1: the twenty sixth of January. Jemima Carhm, thank you for

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Speaker 1: joining us.

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Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me.

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Speaker 1: What a treat to have you