Hariharan speaks about finding actor Jayan

Actor Jayan

, a phenomenon that created a long lasting trend in Malayalam cinema debuted in director Hariharan's

movie Panchami

. The filmmaker who bagged the JC Daniel award this year for his outstanding contribution to the industry, tells us how he found Jayan from Krishnan Nair.

Hariharan feels that it is important to talk about it, at least now. "I have heard many making claims on the same. Some have even written books about it!,"he says.

Decades ago, Hariharan was shooting the film Panchami with Prem Nazir and Jayabharathi, at Sathya studio in Madras. "KP Ummer was supposed to shoot that day and as he was stuck in another project, we were thinking of wrapping up for the day. That's when Jayabharathi told me about one of her relatives named Krishnan Nair. We called him, he came and we shot a scene to rate his acting. He did well. He also mentioned that earlier, he had done a song sequence in the film Shapamoksham, which wasn’t released yet. So, in the film’s credits, we gave ‘introducing Jayan’ and launched him,"he says.

Later, Jayan was also part of many other Hariharan films like Adimakachavadam and Priyaputhran. "He used to constantly ask me for a prominent role and I had it in my mind too. We were planning a movie with Madhu, written by Malayattoor Ramakrishnan, but the producer didn’t like it. So, we decided to do a movie based on the English novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, by DH Lawrence, titled Sarapancharam. The story was by Malayattoor, I wrote the screenplay and dialogues were by K T Muhammed. We gave Jayan a week’s training at the producer's house's terrace on how he should perform the dialogues as well. The shoot was done at Kodiakanal and the film was released. We never knew the movie would become a huge hit,"he says.



On the release day of Sarapancharam, Hariharan was at Tara hotel in Thiruvananthapuram for the shoot of

Idavazhiyile Poocha Minda Poocha

. "I got many calls on the Jayan magic, especially in the sequence involving a horse. The following Sunday, Jayan came to meet me. He even cried, thanking me,"he says.

Jayan soon became a star. "He was contacted by many directors, producers and movie makers. He became a trend and Jayan, horse and Jayamalini became an inevitable part of Malayalam cinema for quite a while,"he says.