Rakul Preet Singh is playing Shurpanakha in Nitesh Tiwari's Ramayana, and she's the first to admit the character barely gets a backstory in the epic she's from.

"There's not much we know about her, even though she triggered the incidents that finally led to the war," Rakul told Brides Today magazine in a recent conversation. "There was just so much to explore with this role."

That's the pitch, really. Shurpanakha exists in most retellings as a single flashpoint, the moment that sets the Ramayana's war in motion, and little else. For an actor looking at nearly two decades in the industry, playing a character defined by one incident and almost nothing before or after it is less a limitation than an opening.

Asked to name a favourite role from her career, Rakul dodged. "I can't pick one!" she said, before adding, "It's been a long journey. Every film is special and teaches you something." Fair enough, given the range on her resume. She's played a condom tester in Chhatriwali, Ayesha across the De De Pyaar De films, and a doctor dealing with gender bias in the medical field in Doctor G. None of these are roles that repeat each other, and Ramayana continues that pattern by taking her somewhere she's never gone before: mythology.

The appeal, as she describes it, isn't really about playing a villain or a mythological figure for its own sake. It's about a character whose public perception is frozen at one moment, and the space that leaves for an actor to fill in everything around it. Shurpanakha's story, sparse as it is in the text, gave her room to build rather than imitate.

Nitesh Tiwari's Ramayana has been one of the most closely tracked productions in Hindi cinema for a while now, with a cast that's been assembled piece by piece and revealed in stages. Rakul's casting as Shurpanakha adds another name to a film that's clearly not short on scale or ambition. What it does mean, going by her own comments, is that the film isn't treating its mythological figures as flat archetypes. At least not this one.

No release date has been confirmed in this round of reporting, and Rakul didn't offer specifics on the shoot itself, how much screen time the character gets, or how her take diverges from the versions audiences already carry in their heads from television and folk retellings. Those are the questions that'll matter once trailers start dropping and comparisons start flying, as they always do with anything touching the Ramayana.