Sai Pallavi To Do Her Own Vocals for MS Subbulakshmi Biopic

Sai Pallavi, who made her Hindi debut last week, has now moved on to her most ambitious project to date — she is to play Bharat Ratna M.S. Subbulakshmi in the famous singer’s biopic. The actress is learning classical Carnatic singing from scratch, to play the part with authenticity. She will be performing all the vocals in the biopic herself.

Aamir Khan, who has been learning Hindustani classical singing for the past two years, says Carnatic singing is even tougher than Hindustani classical. “Sai has an uphill task ahead. But she is up to the challenge; in fact she is up to any challenge.”

Jaya Bachchan, who played a singer in Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Abhimaan, says she wouldn’t have dared sing her own songs. “We had Lataji, and there ended all discussion on who was to sing for me in Abhimaan. Now it is different. There are no singers to match the stature of the two Bharat Ratnas, Lata Mangeshkar and M S Subbulakshmi. What Sai Pallavi is doing is very brave.”

Trained classical playback singer Kavita Krishnamurthy feels Sai’s singing would add authenticity to her performance. “Playback singing creates a parallel performance on the soundtrack. That is not the requirement when an actor is playing a singer.”

Sanjay Leela Bhansali, who intends to make a biopic on Lata Mangeshkar, feels the biggest challenge would be to find the voice. “If Sai Pallavi is doing her own vocals, then hats off. I know she can pull it off,” he says.

Hindi debut fails

In spite of her stellar performance in Ek Din, the film marking Sai Pallavi’s Hindi debut has underperformed at the box office. Sai was in fact waiting to see the response to her first Hindi film before signing anything else in the language. She now has Ramayana opposite Ranbir Kapoor where she plays Sita. Apparently her voice, with its strong Tamil accent, will be dubbed in Ramayana after the negative response to her Hindi dialogues in Ek Din.