Sai Pallavi Saw Ranbir as Rama and Says She Was “Awestruck.” Now We Can See the Work Behind It.

Ramayana spent the weekend showing audiences its finished stars. On Ranbir Kapoor’s birthday Monday, it showed some of the machinery underneath him. A new official behind-the-scenes film follows Ranbir through physical preparation, harness work, action training and the less glamorous process of turning an actor into the film’s Rama.

The most useful reaction comes from the person standing opposite him. Sai Pallavi, who plays Sita, describes seeing Ranbir in the role and being struck by how closely he matched the image of Rama she had grown up seeing. Director Nitesh Tiwari discusses the pressure of casting a figure carrying enormous religious and cultural meaning, while Arun Govil and Ravie Dubey also appear discussing Ranbir’s fit for the role.

The footage also makes the movie’s “global production” language more concrete. Action specialist Terry Notary worked with Ranbir, and the video shows international stunt personnel participating in the physical preparation and large-scale sequences. That does not tell us whether the finished action works, but it does show that at least part of what looks effortless in the polished campaign required very physical filmmaking underneath.

For Chitram, Sai Pallavi remains the Telugu bridge into a predominantly Hindi-origin production that will also release in Telugu. More importantly, Monday’s video is a materially different piece of promotion from Saturday’s MrBeast event: that sold Ramayana as a global pop-culture object; this one sells the labor and responsibility behind playing its central character. The campaign is now showing audiences both the spectacle and the scaffolding holding it up.