Gulshan Devaiah, who won praise for playing King Kulashekara in Kantara Chapter 1, has offered a careful defence of Ranbir Kapoor’s Ramayana and its push toward a global audience. His comments, made in a conversation with Hindustan Times, frame mythological filmmaking less as a problem of belief than as a problem of craft, memory and ambition.
Make-believe is accepted; craft is the test
Devaiah argued that convincing an audience is not the central difficulty. Viewers, he said, walk into a mythological film already knowing it is make-believe. What keeps them inside the story is how well the film is shot, how strongly the performances work, and whether the illusion is sustained. Kantara was fiction; the Ramayana arrives with far more existing literature around it.
- Familiar texts create expectations before the first frame.
- Revered figures carry devotional and cultural weight beyond drama.
- Nostalgia for older portrayals becomes the yardstick for new ones.
The particular weight of Lord Ram
Devaiah singled out Lord Ram as a role with distinctive baggage. He noted the title maryada purushottam, and the affection many viewers still hold for Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayan and Arun Govil’s Lord Ram. That memory, he suggested, is the standard Ranbir Kapoor will be measured against. Such comparison is not the film’s problem alone; Devaiah offered Shivaji Maharaj as another figure whose sacred status makes interpretation delicate.
Nitesh Tiwari’s Ramayana is planned as a two-part project. Ranbir Kapoor plays Lord Ram, Sai Pallavi plays Sita and Yash plays Ravana, with the first part expected around Diwali 2026.
Why the global ambition matters
Devaiah was more interested in defending the film’s global scale than in litigating its casting. He believes Ramayana is built for the Indian diaspora and for audiences beyond it, and he sees nothing wrong with that ambition. Hollywood, he argued, is the largest market for English films; an Indian film that wants the whole world watching is a healthy ambition. The ambition, he added, is not detached from the culture but a push to take a story drawn from Indian tradition to a wider audience.
His model is RRR. He did not personally connect with the film, but he was pleased by its success in the United States because it opened a door. “I didn’t really vibe with RRR, but I love that it did so well in the US,” he said. The distinction between liking a film and wanting the industry to expand is the quiet point of his argument.
Gulshan Devaiah will next be seen in Kaushal Oza’s Little Thomas, co-starring Rasika Dugal, opening in theatres on October 23.
Source: The Times of India
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