In conversation with FAB UK’s Pallavi Raj, the Ramayana star discusses dressing as Sita, imagining the film’s costumes on international runways and the lessons she hopes to carry beyond the role.
By Pallavi Raj | FAB UK Magazine
When her dialect coach touched her feet after a scene on Ramayana, Sai Pallavi began to cry. The gesture came from someone who had seen her making phone calls and getting ready, who knew the person behind the character.
“Even before she started to cry, I started to cry,” Sai tells FAB UK. “I said, ‘What are you even doing?’”
She had been taken aback. For Sai, the encounter revealed how deeply people can connect with a character they worship. She understood the gesture as an expression of devotion to Sita, directed towards the person embodying her.
“I was very humbled and overwhelmed to experience that amount of love,” she says.
Directed by Nitesh Tiwari and produced by Namit Malhotra, Ramayana: Rise of a Legend stars Sai as Sita alongside Ranbir Kapoor as Rama and Yash as Ravana. Its international release brings the epic to audiences around the world, with visual effects from DNEG and ReDefine.
According to the production notes, most of the film was shot at Prime Focus Studios in Mumbai, with sets recreating Ayodhya, Lanka and the forest regions. Visual effects teams worked across Mumbai, London and Vancouver, while the score brings together Hans Zimmer and A.R. Rahman.
Having seen the film, I found its ambition exhilarating. The grandeur of the production design and the visual effects make a compelling case for experiencing Ramayana on a cinema screen. As an Indian living in London, I felt a particular pride in seeing a story from India’s cultural imagination presented to international audiences with such confidence. The scale is immense, and so is the sense of occasion.
I was equally drawn to the grace and simplicity of Sai’s Sita. In our conversation, the discussion moves between the clothes that create her screen image and the responsibility of portraying a figure who means so much to so many.
“I think it’s important that I just surrender to God and let her work through me.”
SAI PALLAVI
Finding her way to Sita
When I ask how she imagined herself looking as Sita when she accepted the role, Sai’s response shifts the conversation towards her approach to acting.
“It was not about the looks,” she says.
She describes cinema as a “meditative process”, shaped by the people she works with and the characters whose lives she tries to understand. Empathy is central to that work.
“You empathize with these characters you play, and you try to make it as real as possible because you connect with their reality.”
With Sita, that process brought a particular uncertainty. “I’m expected to play a goddess. I don’t know how to think of her,” she says. She questioned whether she possessed the compassion, faith and strength she associated with Sita.
Her response was to pray and surrender. “This is beyond my power,” she says. “I think it’s important that I just surrender to God and let her work through me.”
Asked about the feeling of arriving on set, Sai recalls the practical concentration required of everyone involved. “End of the day, we’re all actors. We’ve got to be ready with our lines. We’ve got to say it on cue.” There was lighting to consider and movement to coordinate. It was within those working routines that the encounter with her dialect coach became so overwhelming.
Inside Sita’s wardrobe
The film’s costumes are designed by Rimple and Harpreet. When I ask which piece Sai would borrow from Sita’s wardrobe and how she would style it as herself, she begins with a clear statement of personal taste: “I love sarees.”
She is less drawn to heavy saris and an abundance of jewellery. What appeals to her about the look she would choose is how it made her feel.
“I think it created a lot of calmness in me,” she says. She speaks about the fibres and colours used in clothes, and the effect she feels they can have on the person wearing them.
Her proposed restyling would be modest. “I think she’s perfectly styled,” Sai says of Sita. The blouse is the one element she might adapt to her own preferences: “I think I might just style the blouse a different way, but I think I’m good with the saree.”
Asked separately for her favourite look in the film, she chooses the blue sari worn in the scene where Rama gives Sita a flower and places it in her hair.
“The color, the material, and the way it sat on my body felt perfect.”
The wardrobe also brought physical challenges, particularly the heavy dupattas worn over her head. “Because it’s so heavy, your head tends to fall back,” she says.
When I ask which small detail made the greatest difference to how she played Sita, Sai mentions the nose pin as a particularly pretty addition. But she is careful about attributing the character’s presence to any physical detail. In her understanding of Sita, that presence would remain without the adornments.
“End of the day, she exudes a different kind of energy,” she says. “I think with or without any of these, I think she’ll still shine.”
Could Ramayana inspire the runway?
The film’s elaborate wardrobe also invites a fashion question: which elements could Sai imagine on the runways of Paris or Milan?
“I think right now we’re all into maximalism suddenly,” she says. “We like layering.”
She points to the layers of dupattas, the colour combinations and the decorative work on the saris and other draped pieces. Her appreciation extends to Ranbir Kapoor’s costumes, too, and the care with which their different elements were brought together.
“Everything was meticulously done,” she says. “I think these ones could be a great fit.”
For Sai, the possibilities extend to the jewellery and headpieces. “I like tiaras and crowns, so maybe that could also work their way into the runway,” she says. “That’s a very pretty ornament, and I think that would be interesting to see that.”
The confidence to be herself
When I bring up the way she has embraced her own appearance on screen, Sai is quick to acknowledge the people who helped make that possible.
“I owe it all to the directors who have given me the space to be myself,” she says.
She explains that those choices belong within a larger collaboration. Directors have to consider the film, the character and the lighting; visual effects introduce further complications. She has worked with filmmakers willing to adjust things to present her in the best possible way, and she is grateful for that willingness.
Her confidence began with uncertainty. “It started off as looking for validation, fear mainly, in my first film, if I’d even be accepted for just being plain me.”
She credits Premam director Alphonse Puthren and the people who came after him with believing in her beauty and helping her find the confidence to be herself. What she now hopes to offer others is that same sense of permission.
“If I’m able to make anybody else, even one person feel good about themselves, just to be plain themselves and not make themselves fit into a space, I think I’m good.”
What stays when the costumes come off
My final question returns to Malar, Sai’s character in Premam. Recalling her earlier comments about how dressing for that role stayed with her, I ask what part of Sita comes home with her when the costumes come off.
“That’s a deep question,” she says.
Her answer is about learning to detach when she finds herself in difficult or unfamiliar circumstances, particularly in an environment unlike the one in which she usually thrives. She wants to recognise what those situations can teach her.
“It’s important for me to look at it as the situation teaching me something very crucial and very important, and I learn something about myself because only in the hardest times you learn more about yourself.”
She describes it as something she hopes to practise. The outcome she wants is to leave such a situation feeling good about herself.
“So I hope to win every time I’m in a situation like that where I feel good about myself when I walk out of that situation,” Sai says. “That’s something that I take back.”
Ramayana: Rise of a Legend is in UK cinemas from 5 November 2026.