Like Monica Lewinsky, I was used as a pawn

In a rare interview, Jemima Khan tells Gavanndra Hodge about Impeachment, why she had to tell Lewinsky’s story, her marriage to Imran Khan and finding her creative mojo

- Gavanndra Hodge

I REMEMBER my father laughing at my mother when she suggested something might look good on my CV, as if it was a ridiculous notion,” says Jemima Khan, over a vast schnitzel topped with anchovies and a fried egg at Fischer’s in Marylebone, near the offices of her production company Instinct. “But I longed to have a great CV. I was more academic than my brothers [Zac and Ben], and yet there were definitely different expectations.”

Khan’s father, billionaire businessman Sir James Goldsmith, died in 1997, so he is not here to witness Khan’s latest professional triumphs. Impeachment is a TV drama about Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton, starring Beanie Feldstein, that Khan has produced with Ryan Murphy and premieres next week. Meanwhile, What’s Love Got To Do With It, the rom-com she wrote and produced with Working Title starring Lily James, has just wrapped.

Khan is now 47 and the possessor of a glowing CV, which her mother, Annabel, 88, is incredibly proud of. Although there are some interesting lacunae, most notably the decade she spent in Lahore as the wife of Imran Khan, with whom she has two sons, Suleiman, 24, and Kasim, 22. She returned to the UK when she was 30, taking a master’s degree at SOAS, after which she was made European Editor at Large at Vanity Fair and given a permanent position at the New Statesman. Her journalism segued into documentary-making about five years ago.