How Delulu Became Her Solulu: Actor-Influencer Riya Shibu On Charming Nivin Pauly and Movie Audiences in 'Sarvam Maya'

Riya Shibu isn’t entirely new to the abruptness of going viral. But the Gen-Z star admits that she hasn’t quite received as much love and recognition as she has after the release of her film Sarvam Maya last Christmas. The movie went on to collect over ₹150 crore worldwide, and Riya’s role as Delulu, the friendly ghost who guides Prabha’s (Nivin Pauly) spirit through tough times, has made her something of a happy mascot. And yet, the clips that went viral after the film’s release were not of the unusually cheerful Riya being just as cheerful on screen. Instead, they showed the actor-influencer breaking down after seeing the response to her movie when she watched the first show with audiences. But the reason for these tears was not redemption for finally achieving a childhood dream, or the relief of a struggler making sense of life.

“After the first show got over,” Riya recalls, “is when I realised we wouldn’t all be meeting again, unless they made a sequel,” she says. “No more shoots with the crew, no more stories to hear from Nivin chettan, no more spending time with the chettan in sound who reads the Bible, even at 1 a.m.” More than external validation, it somehow felt befitting of the character she plays in the film — that the little things mattered most to her, over fame or instant stardom.

You notice this excitement in her voice each time she begins to talk about the days of the shoot, as the speed of her words exceeds the speed of thought. “I didn’t want to say something cliché like, ‘I loved you in Premam,’ or that I’m his huge fan,” she jokes about her first day on set with Nivin. She had grown up his fangirl, but wanted to play it cool. “So I began by joking around with him, like we were old pals. There were a few kids playing around us, and I started acting like they were there to see me,” she says.

It’s the sort of thing that immediately put Nivin at ease, and was the start of an easy friendship — the type that made their on-screen chemistry the driving force of Sarvam Maya. This, in a film in which their chemistry was spoken about even more than that of Nivin and his longtime offscreen-onscreen best friend, Aju Varghese.

At times, she jokes that their buddy equation “kinda, sorta got out of hand.” “After a few days, it became impossible to stop laughing during takes,” she says. “When we were shooting in Bombay, Akhil chettan (the film’s director) requested us to take it easy and laugh later, because it costs more to shoot there.”

This was just one of the many instructions she kept receiving from Akhil, the son of Sathyan Anthikad — both of whom have now become mentors to Riya. “Maybe with new actors, instructions from directors may be to do more, to be more expressive… but with me, Akhil chettan had to keep controlling my meter,” she laughs. “I was too hyper and loud at times, so I get why.”

This comfort zone is something, it appears, she’s a master at creating, even during interviews. As she gives you a brief introduction to where she was born and what she studied, there’s always a joke thrown in. “My childhood home was on the Kerala–Tamil Nadu border,” she says. “From my house, you could see the ‘Welcome to Kerala’ sign. But inside, my bedroom was in Kerala, and the drawing room was in Tamil Nadu.”

What begins as an interview somehow ends like a chat between “pals,” thanks to Riya’s unique skill set. This is also what has made her so endearing to family audiences, even when she’s just two films old.

“Before Sarvam..., there was appreciation and love I got on Instagram. But that’s nothing like the love you get after a movie — especially a movie loved by families. For kids, I’ve become their Delulu chechi. And on the other hand, there were so many aunties and uncles as old as my grandparents who came up, held my hand, and spoke to me by calling me mole (daughter). I feel like my grandmom would have been so happy to see all this today,” she says slowly, as her words finally catch up with the emotions swirling around in her head.