After playing almost moron like characters in Kodiyettam and Kallan Pavithran, Gopi turned the tables on an unsuspecting audience and shocked them with the out and out negative role of Ayyappan,the protagonist of 'Yavanika'!
The film, a detective thriller, explores the backstage drama of a travelling drama troupe. Ayyappan was a sadist, a cold-blooded Thabala player with criminal tendencies. Gopi on the character “The moustache that my character, Ayyappan, sported was real. George made me pose for still photographs in the costumes of Ayyappan and that was it. What was strange about the film was that almost all the scenes in which I was there were shot between 8 PM and 5:30 AM. Ayyappan was a creature of the night. He was a drunkard and a womaniser. Even the theatre scenes where shot at night...." It is said that he learnt Thabala to play the role to perfection. Later on George has reportedly said that 'Ayyappan' was loosely structured on a real life Thabala artist, Alleppey Usman. Ayyappan is still being talked about, perhaps much more than his award winning roles in other films. No wonder, Gopi said once - "The character does not go inside me, I go inside the character. The character is formless, unseen, in front of me, and I enter the outline drawn by me. If an actor takes the character inside him, what you see will be the actor and not the character."

Mammootty
as Sub Inspector Jacob Eeraly

Venu Nagavally
as Joseph Kollapally

Bharath Gopi
as Tablist Aiyappan

Jalaja
as Rohini

Supporting Roles

Jagathy Sreekumar as Varunan	Thilakan as Vakkachan	Nedumudi Venu as Balagopalan	Ashokan as Vishnu
Sreenivasan as Chellapan	Vijayavani as Molly Jacob Eeraly	Captain Mathew	Perumana Bhaskar
S Henry	PA Latheef	Kuttyedathi Vilasini as Ammini	Mohan Jose as Danny
Captain Thomas	Pushpa (Old)	Thodupuzha Vasanthy as Rajamma

Bharatha Muniyoru Kalam Varachu

Singer : KJ Yesudas, Selma George   |   Lyrics : ONV Kurup   |   Music : MB Sreenivasan

Chembaka Pushpa

Singer : KJ Yesudas   |   Lyrics : ONV Kurup   |   Music : MB Sreenivasan

Machaanethedi

Singer : Selma George   |   Lyrics : MB Sreenivasan   |   Music : MB Sreenivasan

Mizhikalil Nirakathiraayi

Singer : KJ Yesudas   |   Lyrics : ONV Kurup   |   Music : MB Sreenivasan