Nikolina Pišek

Nikolina Pisek is a Croatian television presenter and actress. Teenage Nikolina gave modeling in Milan a brief try before returning home and enrolling in design studies at the University of Zagreb's Faculty of Architecture. Through her university studies, Pisek soon applied and got hired for a photographer position at Globus magazine. She eventually also began writing a fashion column at the magazine. After graduating, she worked as set designer for a few theatre productions, including the staging of Madam Butterfly at the Croatian National Theatre in Osijek. Afterwards, she worked in music video production. Pisek's on-camera television career began in her mid-twenties courtesy of television producer Sinisa Svilan who hired her for a show he was in charge of developing. She quickly made a name for herself within Croatia by appearing on various frivolous entertainment, gossip, and lifestyle programmes on the country's public broadcaster HRT. Initially, from 2003, it was a show named "Glamour Cafe", created by Svilan, that consisted of co-hosts Pisek and Nina Skorup doing bits and interviews with a lot of gossip, innuendo, and overt sexuality. Pisek's prominence in Croatia led to an offer of a pictorial for the Croatian edition of Playboy that she accepted, appearing in the magazine's July 2003 issue. When "Glamour Cafe" got taken off the air, Pisek landed on "Shpitza", another HRT gossip entertainment programme, this time co-hosting alongside Danijel Despot. By now a recognizable public personality in Croatia, Pisek hosted Dora in March 2007, Croatian selection for the Eurovision Song Contest. She started getting acting offers as well, which led to an appearance on the Bitange i princeze (2005). Further cementing her local star status was her fall 2007 participation as a contestant on the second season of Ples sa zvijezdama (2006). Arguably her biggest break came in late September 2008, when she was announced as one of the four hosts of Operacija Trijumf (2008) (local Star Academy version for the five Balkan countries that used to be a part of Yugoslavia). Weekly appearances on the hugely popular 3-month long reality singing contest that aired on 6 networks and was seen by a large audience throughout Balkans led to a surge of popularity for her as well as expanded career opportunities outside Croatia. In the aftermath of her appearances on the hugely-popular Operacija Trijumf (2008), simultaneous to working on Nova TV in Croatia, Pisek began devoting more attention to raising her profile in the Serbian media market with regular appearances in the country's tabloids and lifestyle magazines. Furthermore to the end, in 2011, her collaboration with the young Serbian folk-pop singer Sasa Kovacevic was arranged via a song called "Idemo do mene". Since 2018, Nikolina started working for Happy TV, and first show that she is hosting on that network is "Soba srece".