What’s Love Got to Do with it? hits Australian cinemas this Thursday 26 January. In an ode to love and Pakistan, writer Jemima Khan wanted to show the Pakistan she got to know when she moved there for love.  

Marrying former Pakistan cricket captain and former Prime Minister, Imran Khan, Ms Khan feels as though she almost grew up in Pakistan, living there between the ages of 20 and 30. While there, in what she says are formative years, she saw a side of the country that is seldom displayed in western media – the vibrant, joyful, and colourful Pakistan.

The film follows Zoe Stevenson (Lily James), a documentary maker from London as she searches for her next project. She meets up with childhood friend, Kaz Khan (Shazad Latif) who tells her he has decided to follow the same path as his parents and find his match via an assisted marriage. Unlucky in love, dating app addict Zoe is fascinated by the idea and decides to make it the focus of her next documentary.

“Lily James and Shazad Latif are best friends in real life, they have that kind of easy chemistry. The idea that they’ve known each other as kids was kind of true and I hope that that reads on the screen,” says Ms Khan.

Before meeting Imran and learning more about his culture, Ms Khan says she had never even heard the term ‘assisted’ marriage; rather she had heard of ‘arranged’ marriage. She says there’s a tendency to conflate arranged marriage with forced marriage, which is an unfair assessment.  

“The difference between assisted marriage, which is essentially an introduction by the people who know and love you best, and forced marriage, which is a horrendous practice, it’s worlds apart,” she says.

At 21 years of age, Ms Khan found herself living with her in-laws, Imran’s father, sisters, sisters’ husbands, and their children. During this time, she was exposed to arranged marriages, both ones that had stood the test of time and those that were just beginning. She says some of them were really successful and happy, seemingly challenging the notion of love that we have been exposed to in your average rom-com.

 “I was sort of intrigued by this notion that you walk into love instead of falling into love. That you simmer then boil; you don’t start with love, you end with love,” she says.

Of all his siblings, her ex-husband Imran was the only one to enter a love marriage (with her), one that is unassisted, and he has been the only one to go through a divorce. Ms Khan says there is something to the inbuilt pragmatism of assisted marriage that could be helpful in terms of long-term satisfaction. She notes that she is just like the next person, completely ruined by rom-coms, which she says are to blame for the love-at-first-sight trope, the opposite to an arranged marriage.

“This mythologised idea of romantic love that can sometimes be quite unrealistic and leave you with expectations that are quite hard for a partner, a relationship to match up to,” she says.

Without wanting to get too deep, Ms Khan says she believes our unrealistic expectations of love have grown in the absence of religion.

“We need to believe in the one, and we need to sort of almost make the other person this higher power and are everything; that is not terribly helpful because I don’t think any other person can be that.”

In the film, Zoe’s mother Cath, played by Emma Thompson, tries to take a page from the Khan family book and set her daughter up with the local vet. Ms Khan would be thrilled at the idea of playing matchmaker for her sons and choosing her ideal daughter-in-law.

“I’d adore it. Who wouldn’t want to veto and have total control over who their daughter-in-law is going to be; it would be amazing. But I don’t think they’re going to ask me to,” she smiles.

She says her sons played a part in casting the film, and as a producer as well as the writer, Ms Khan was involved in casting decisions. Having dinner with her two sons one night, they asked why she hadn’t cast Asim Chaudhry, and encouraged her to watch his show, People Just Do Nothing. Instantly taken with the show, Ms Khan knew he would be a great addition to the cast and wrote the role of Mo the Matchmaker.

“He laughs now. I slipped into his DMs and said please will you be in [the film], mainly to impress my kids. I wrote the part especially for him,” she says.

When it came to casting Kaz’s wife-to-be, Maymouna (Sajal Ali), Ms Khan went to someone in the know in Pakistan. As talent agencies aren’t common in the country, the writer reached out to an old friend, the unofficial king of culture in Lahore.

“I was like ‘Yusuf, tell me. I need a beautiful actress who is nuanced and foreign and clever. She needs to be just as great as Lily James’ and he was like ‘okay, you need to meet Sajal Ali’,” Ms Khan says. Ms Ali landed the role of Maymouna in the film.

Jemima Khan’s film What’s Love Got to Do with it? (M) is in Australian cinemas from Thursday 26 January.

Canberra Daily would love to hear from you about a story idea in the Canberra and surrounding region. Click here to submit a news tip.