Interview – Shazad Latif “Kaz” What’s Love Got To Do With It?”

Shazad Latif stars as “Kazim Khan” in the romantic comedy, What’s Love Got To Do With It?” The film follows documentary-maker and dating app user Zoe, played by Lily James, as she films her childhood friend Kaz, “Shazad Latif” journey from London to Lahore to marry a stranger, chosen by his parents. As she begins to wonder if she might have something to learn from a profoundly different approach to finding love.

The film hit very close to my experiences on multiple levels and it hit in ways I didn’t expect! It was so light and fun at the start with the rom-com references and fairytale style of storytelling which I really enjoyed. But as the story went on the movie touched on a deeper level that I have never seen a movie tackle.

Interview – Shazad Latif “Kazim ‘Kaz’ Khan”

I sat down with Shazad Latif to talk about what drew him to the role of Kaz, what his favorite things about South Asian Weddings are, and more.

In the film, Kaz, a British Pakistani Muslim doctor, is the pride of his mother’s life. He is inclined to do “the right thing” by his family and at 32, he hasn’t found his future life partner and so, with relative ease, throws the opportunity open to his parents to help him find someone to settle down with. Kaz grew up next door in a sleepy London suburb. He drinks (behind his parents’ back), smokes (ditto), and parties. He’s a Londoner through and through – they share plenty in common and so Zoe is baffled that he would want to do something so alien to her, like an assisted marriage.
But Kaz has grown up in a huge family of successful assisted marriages and has a prevailing sense of duty.

Shazad told us about what drew him to the role, “There was a chance to play someone who had many different things going on. But on the surface, he seems okay. He’s a very dutiful son. Everything seems to be okay. He’s a doctor. Everything’s good. He’s like, yeah, I’ll do this arranged marriage / assisted marriage. But I always love those characters that deep down there’s a lot of pain and inner turmoil because this guy’s deciding to please his family over following his own heart, you know?” He goes on to explain “And that’s a very interesting thing to play. And then as well as the fact that I got to work with Shekhar Kapur and Jemima Khan and Lily James.”

What’s Love Got To Do With It

I really appreciate a project attempting to tackle so many layers of Pakistani traditions and family. And it does so while being a commentary on love and marriage on a universal level. Lily James and Shazad Latif worked so well together and really sold the story. It is also easily one of the funniest roles Emma Thompson has ever done!

Writer Jemima Khan says it all began as an exploration of the contrast between Eastern and Western approaches to romance. “While, for my friends in England, arranged marriage was often seen as some sort of medieval chattel swap (so often confused with the harrowing idea of forced marriage), I started to see some merits in the seemingly unromantic consensual arrangement. Over the course of my time in Pakistan, I saw many arranged marriages succeed. I may even have been asked to arrange a few myself. The couples I met whose marriages had been arranged didn’t start with love – they ended with it.”

What’s Love Got To Do With It? Arrives In Theaters on May 5th.