Nikolina Ristović

Nikolina Ristović, née Pišek (born 8 April 1973) is a Croatian television presenter.

Career

Pišek was born in Zagreb, SR Croatia, SFR Yugoslavia. Her television career began in her mid twenties after graduating design from the University of Zagreb's Faculty of Architecture. She made a name for herself within Croatia by appearing on various frivolous entertainment, gossip, and lifestyle programmes on HRT, Croatian public broadcaster.

First, it was the show named Glamour Cafe, created by Siniša Svilan, that consisted of two co-hosts Pišek and Nina Skorup doing bits and interviews with a lot of gossip, innuendo, and overt sexuality.^[1] Somewhat provocative nature of the show combined with the duo of physically attractive young female hosts turned a lot of heads.^[2] When Glamour Cafe got taken off the air, Pišek landed on another HRT gossip entertainment programme called Shpitza, this time as co-host alongside Danijel Despot. Shpitza's main competition was similarly conceptualized Red Carpet programme on the rival Nova TV station.

By now a recognizable public personality in Croatia, Pišek hosted HRT Dora in March 2007, Croatian selection for the Eurovision Song Contest. She started getting bit acting offers as well, which led to her appearance on Bitange i princeze series. Further cementing her local star status was her fall 2007 participation as contestant on the second season of Ples sa zvijezdama, Croatian version of Strictly Come Dancing, airing on HRT.^[3]

Shpitza somewhat ran out of steam and frequent changes at the male co-host position ensued. Despot got replaced by Mario Petreković, but he quickly gave way to Luka Bulić. However, the show started losing viewership rapidly and got taken off the air in late 2007.^[4] In early 2008 Pišek co-hosted a youth-oriented talk show Na domaćem terenu with Mirko Fodor, also on HRT.

In late summer 2008, she left HRT and moved to Nova TV, Croatian private TV station, thus reuniting with Siniša Svilan who in the meantime became a head of programming at Nova. Once there, she started hosting the entertainment show named Red Carpet Light.^[5]

Arguably her biggest break came in late September 2008, almost simultaneously to her network switch, when she was announced as one of the four hosts of Operacija Trijumf (local Star Academy version for the five Balkan countries that used to be a part of Yugoslavia) alongside Milan Kalinić, Ana Mihajlovski, and Maca Marinković. 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 surge of popularity for her as well as expanded career opportunities outside Croatia. Among those are co-hosting the 2009 Pjesma Mediterana festival in Budva with Ognjen Amidžić during early June 2009 and being slated to appear in a recurring acting role in a Serbian sitcom.^[6]

Simultaneously throughout the first part of 2009 she continued appearing on Nova TV programmes. She worked as studio co-host on Farma reality show alongside Mia Kovačić and Dražen "Kocka" Kocijan. Pišek also took over for Ana Stunić hosting IN magazin. She is also acting in drama series Najbolje godine

Personal life

In 1997, during a relationship with Mark Cigoj, journalist who wrote for Globus magazine at the time, Pišek gave birth to their daughter Hana. The relationship with Cigoj subsequently ended.

From 2007 to 2010, Pišek dated the professional scuba diver Kristijan Curavić. In 2011 she dated Matija Ćorković.^[7]

Pišek married Vidoje Ristović in September 2013, and moved to Belgrade. She gave birth to a baby girl in 2014.

References