Dhanush firmly backs Sai Pallavi as Sita in ‘Ramayana’: ‘Can’t get a better Sita across India’

Amid widespread criticism on social media about actress Sai Pallavi’s casting as Sita in Ramayana: Part 1, the cinematic adaptation of the Indian epic Ramayana, actor Dhanush has thrown his weight behind her, saying one “can’t get a better actress than her” for the role.

Speaking at the recent audio launch of Om, the Tamil gangster drama that brings together Dhanush, Mammootty and Pallavi, the former was unanimous in his praise. “Even if you search across India, you won’t find a Sita like her,” he said to rapturous cheers and applause. “She is a great performer.”

Addressing the criticism, Dhanush, who has starred alongside Sai Pallavi in the Tamil action-comedy Maari 2, said: “I just don’t understand the noise around her performance… A lot of noise.”

On acting alongside her, Dhanush said that she is the most apt person for the role in the movie, directed by Nitesh Tiwari and produced by Namit Malhotra.

Ramayana features music by AR Rahman and Hans Zimmer and features an ensemble cast, including Ranbir Kapoor, Ravi Dubey, Yash, Vivek Oberoi, Rakul Preet Singh, Kajal Agarwal and Arun Govil.

‘A radical transformation’

“When I first met Sai Pallavi during Maari 2, she was so innocent and spoke very little. She would think carefully before saying anything,” Dhanush said, adding that she is a great believer in God and even in between shoots, she would often pray.

“Nine years later on the sets of this film (Om), I found her to be an entirely different person. Here she was as someone who had completely mastered cinema.”

Sai Pallavi’s role in Ramayana became a talking point after her action sequences, in which she fights demonic creatures, from the movie surfaced online. Actress Dipika Chikhlia took exception to it, saying that such scenes aren’t an authentic portrayal of the epic Ramayana, authored by the bard Valmiki. The movie claims to be based on the epic.

“Yes, I saw that on Instagram (the action sequence)… I really don’t know,” Chikhlia, who portayed Sita in Ramanand Sagar’s 1987 adaptation of the epic for TV, told The Free Press Journal.

“The memory that I have of Valmiki’s Ramayana and Tulsidas’ Ramayana, which was majorly a part of our Ramayan, I don’t remember that anywhere we had those kinds of scenes,” she told the publication. “But there are more than 300 Ramayanas in our country. Every story, every Ramayana is a little different from the other one. So they (makers) may have picked up something from some Ramayana, which I’m not aware of.”

In Om, directed by Rajkumar Periasamy, Sai Pallavi plays a police officer investigating timber smuggling. The movie is produced by Wunderbar Films and RTake Studios, and also stars Sreeleela, Naseeruddin Shah and Indrans.