Can Gillian ever forgive Jemima for dating her ex?
They’ve been friends for years. No wonder X-Files star Gillian Anderson is stunned that Jemima Goldsmith is dating her former lover just weeks after they split. So . . .
THEY aren’t perhaps the most likely of girl friends — but until very recently Jemima Goldsmith and Gillian Anderson would have said that they were dear to each other. Both are very glamorous divorcees of a similar age, living in London with a host of friends in common. Both are, of course, in showbusiness; Ms Anderson is a celebrated actress, made famous by The X-Files and most recently seen, to great acclaim, as Margaret Thatcher in The Crown, and Jemima Goldsmith is a film producer.
At numerous parties you will have seen them chatting — both mingle with the ‘in’, wellconnected crowd which includes singer Lily Allen, comedian Jack Whitehall, TV producer Henrietta Conrad, Strictly’s Claudia Winkleman and others.
Here they are (above), pictured with their arms around each other at the 2018 pre-Bafta party thrown by British film producer Charles Finch. The two women chatted away into the night at last year’s event at Loulou’s in Mayfair, too. A fellow partygoer observed that they formed a sociable knot of three with Ms Anderson’s boyfriend, Peter Morgan, and appeared very comfortable and friendly.
Alas, that friendship now lies in tatters as Ms Goldsmith, 46, has begun a new romance with Morgan — Ms Anderson’s serious boyfriend of four years standing, and from whom she split only a few weeks ago.
News that Anderson, 52, and Morgan, 57, who writes The Crown, had broken up emerged in mid-December. Yet early in the new year, he and Jemima started a romance which has seen him spending time with her in a ‘social bubble’ at her house.
Reports that they are already living together are said by sources to be wide of the mark.
However, they are ‘serious’ about each other already — perhaps no surprise as they have known each other for a long time. ‘They have all three been friends for years,’ I am told. ‘There is a bit of a feeling that Jemima might have been holding a candle for Pete for some time, or at least have had her eye on him.’
Understandably, Gillian Anderson is less than delighted by the news, which appears to show her friend has breached the so-called ‘Girl Code’ which forbids women from moving in on the partners, or ex partners, of their friends.
WELL-placed sources say Anderson is ‘upset and very surprised’ by the turn of events. ‘Her eyebrows are raised,’ I’m told. Another mutual friend exclaims less discreetly: ‘Lordy what a pair!’ when news of the coupling became known.
For Peter Morgan, one of TV’s most successful writers, also has a reputation for being one of its most intense, and Jemima has a reputation for burning through one highdrama romance after another. As a combination, it sounds combustible indeed.
So who is her new man? And will
Morgan be the Mr Right to bring Jemima happiness finally?
Gorgeous, wealthy and accomplished, Jemima Goldsmith’s single status has long been one of society’s great puzzles.
She married cricketer, now Pakistan Prime Minister, Imran Khan when she was just 21 and he 42, and they were together for nine years. She was a shy heiress with a passion for designer labels when they met in a nightclub, and she dropped out of her degree to marry him.
Within a few weeks, they were wed — for him she converted to Islam, learned Urdu and moved to Islamabad.
Some felt that the marriage was an attempt to escape the shadow of her father, the late James Goldsmith, a notorious philanderer who was absent for a lot of her childhood, and fathered eight children by four women, without a shred of remorse.
They have two sons Sulaiman, 24, Qasim, 21, and their divorce in 2004 was said to have been amicable. Her subsequent single years saw romances with a succession of men who have seemed entirely unworthy of her.
There was actor Hugh Grant (caught in flagrante with a prostitute, subject of a famous police mugshot, various love children), comedian and social irritant Russell Brand (recovered sex and drug addict with a penchant for orgies) and twice-divorced PR man Matthew Freud (ten years her senior, who fathered a child with a friend while married to Rupert Murdoch’s daughter Elisabeth).
Two years ago she was even seen dining with actor Steve Coogan — just a friend apparently but his romantic record is wincingly chequered — and she’s also been spotted with cricket charmer Shane Warne (ex of Liz Hurley).
There also seem to have been brief flirtations/friendships with comedian Jack Whitehall and former footballer Jamie Redknapp, conducted at the Chiltern Firehouse restaurant in 2018 and 2019. All with their own charms, undoubtedly, but none of them hearts and flowers material.
Morgan, at least, seems far less of a womaniser than some of her previous choices, and with his excellent film credentials they have much in common. Jemima recently wrote the screenplay and produced the forthcoming rom-com What’s Love Got To Do With It? starring Lily James and Emma Thompson.
Unlike the rest, he has at least sustained a long marriage and had a settled family life. He was married for 17 years to Austrian beauty Lila Schwarzenberg, born Princess Anna Carolina zu Schwarzenberg, and they have five children.
Morgan once remarked that the need to support his family made him write ‘as if he had a gun held to his head’.
The son of refugees, his upbringing, although comfortably middle class, is worlds away from the power and privilege enjoyed by Jemima Goldsmith, although the pair do share a German Jewish bloodline (James Goldsmith was the son of a luxury hotel magnate