Shobana as Kaikasi in ‘Ramayana’: Makers on bringing the Malayali star on board and recreating her younger look

For Malayalis, the announcement of Shobana joining the cast of Ramayana sparked a unique excitement. As one of Indian cinema’s most acclaimed actors and dancers, Shobana takes on the pivotal role of Kaikasi, Ravana’s mother. Although the film boasts an ensemble cast, her involvement brings a beloved Malayalam icon to this ambitious reimagining of the epic.

The makers, too, have a great deal of admiration for the actor. Recalling their interactions with Shobana during the casting process, the filmmaker Nitesh Tiwari spoke about how effortlessly she understood the character and its emotional nuances. “What I loved about Shobana through the interactions I had was that she's obviously a very gifted actor and dancer, someone who's got such a deep history and richness in her own past. When we spoke to her, she was so effortless in understanding the nuances of the character and her performance,” he said.

What particularly impressed him and producer Namit Malhotra was her ability to convey emotions without necessarily relying on words. “If you see the way she communicates through her eyes, she doesn't have to speak long dialogues. You can see the way her natural talent plays,” he told Onmanorama.

He also made an interesting observation about the significance of characters such as Kaikasi in a story as expansive as the Ramayana. According to him, the importance of a role should not be judged by how much screen time an actor gets, but by how much the character influences the story and its central figures.

“I used to always say to everyone, don't forget about the length of the role. What you do to the story when you are in that role is very critical. You are actually the reason why the direction or the travel of the story goes the way it does. Whether it is Kaikeyi or Kaikasi, each one brings a certain impact to where the story and the characters go,” he said.

Shobana's portrayal also required the team to take her character through different stages of life. This meant recreating a younger version of the actor, an aspect that involved considerable work with de-ageing technology. Given how familiar audiences are with Shobana's younger appearance from her earlier films, getting this transformation right was particularly important.

The makers also offered an interesting glimpse into how they approached technology, especially artificial intelligence, while working on a film of this scale. Namit clarified that AI had a rather limited role in the actual making of Ramayana. Much of its use was restricted to creating references and helping the team visualise certain portions before taking them to the shooting floor, he said.

“AI was very restrained because AI was still not even developed while we were already making the film. A lot of our AI was more to create references or images,” he said. He added that while AI could help the team imagine how a particular scene might look, it could not yet offer the artistic control needed to translate that vision onto the screen.

“AI still does not have the ability to control the nuances. When you want to bring that kind of fidelity, you need control over lighting and all the various tools that we need from an artistic standpoint. Those tools in AI are not available,” he said. Thus, technology served more as a starting point for visualising ideas than as a means of creating the film's actual visuals. At the heart of it, however, remains the work of the actors and filmmakers who bring these characters to life.