Amanpour and her ex-husband US diplomat
Christiane Amanpour and Emily Maitlis are good pals. I mean, of course they are. So when the 67-year-old CNN anchor recently decided to “diversify” into podcasting, she knew who to call. On stage at The Podcast Show in London last month Maitlis, who famously quit the BBC to launch The News Agents, recalled Amanpour’s initial pitch. The success of a Bengal tiger-spotting family trip to India inspired her. And on a practical level Trump’s 2024 election victory meant Rubin (who had been a special envoy for the secretary of state Antony Blinken) was out of work.
Jamie is James Rubin, the former US diplomat and spokesman for the secretary of state under President Clinton, Madeleine Albright. Also, he’s Amanpour’s ex-husband. The pair got together on a 1997 diplomatic flight to the Balkans and got married in Italy the next year. In 2000 Rubin quit his high-profile role to join her in London, ahead of their son Darius’s birth. But in 2018, after 20 years of marriage, the liberal elite power couple marked their separation with a divorce dinner party (Maitlis was there).
