Although students regularly follow lectures online, the job of a journalist cannot be learned "without being in the field", so our students conducted the interview with Daniela outdoors, with the recommended distance.
Daniela Trbović , a well-known TV presenter and regular host of VERN's graduation ceremonies, immediately accepted our students' invitation to talk during a morning walk along Lake Jarun.
Our Valentina Kožulj and Ema Arh conducted the interview as part of a field trip to the Journalism study program on behalf of the entire student group, because although all students in the Complex Journalistic Forms course were assigned to prepare questions for Daniela, they follow the class online , so a good part of them are not in Zagreb. Therefore, Valentina and Ema sent them a video recording of the interview itself, which was conducted in the presence of lecturer Zlatko Herljević , who selected a few of the most interesting questions and answers for this shortened version.
How did you spend your time in isolation?
With Vesna Pisarović and Janko Popović Volarić, we were supposed to record the show on March 17th. We were going to record without an audience, everything was ready, and the decision was made that there would be no recording after all. That was on Tuesday, and on Sunday there was already an earthquake, so I had "PTSD" then, what would happen to work, how would it all look.
In October last year, you started hosting the late night show "5.com with Daniel". Such shows around the world are mostly hosted by men. How did you find your way into the role of host of such a show?
It's true. Ellen DeGeneres has a daytime show, and men mostly work late nights. Except that ours ran between 9:30 and 10:30, in the evening. And late nights run really late, around 11:30.
How long have you (physically) not been on television?
I haven't been since March 17th, until May 15th, we had to get rid of the old ones, and I had a bunch of them, and now we'll see what happens. I don't know what to watch anymore. I watched all the series, I got sciatica from lying down (laughs). The highlight of my day is walking my dog in the morning. The days are very similar to each other, more of a retirement mood, I don't know what day of the week it is anymore.
Do you hear from your colleagues?
We talk to each other, we have our own group from the show, so we talk to each other that way or on the phone. I talk to my family on the phone, we haven't seen each other for a while, but I've mostly organized myself so that every 8, 9 days I go on a "safari" to get groceries. I was trying to reduce my shopping trips, I started wearing a mask. My son Lovro talked me into it. Cooking lunch, cleaning the apartment, and now I've given up on it, now I'm just thinking about what I'm going to watch. HBO, Netflix, I can't get hooked on anything anymore. I've watched everything I was interested in, I'm reading books, but I can't wait to get back on television. I recommend HBO, the Israeli series "Our Boys" about the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians. It's short, I think it has about eight episodes.
What are you going to do over the summer?
I don't know exactly what I'll do for the summer schedule yet. It's been announced that the show will continue and only 22 episodes have been filmed, so I'll probably be preparing for the fall season. The ratings are good so far, and the fact is that television is the power of habit: first people need to find out about something and watch episode two before they get hooked. In Croatia, late night shows haven't really taken off yet, and yet we're different from Americans, we have different habits.
Viewers also remember your hosting role in the quiz show "The Weakest Link".
It was an interesting format. A hosted quiz show is very rewarding to work on because there are very strict rules. It's a format that you respect, and then between those mandatory characters you have room for improvisation. The weakest link is the BBC format. There's the so-called Bible, a huge book that prescribes everything. The quiz looked the same in all the countries where it was broadcast, from the layout of the boards that came from London to how the lights were set, and the host is someone who is not the host's friend, but rather lets the contestants know that they are not good enough. It was great to work on, I had a great team, interesting and completely different.
In that quiz you had to be dressed in black...
Yes, after those six years of blackness, I couldn't think of any more black for a while.
Why didn't you acknowledge Irena Grobnik's answer that the cloud is the closest celestial body?
(laughs). That was the script in Bitanga i Princesse and it was one of the last episodes. The script for that episode was written by Ivan Goran Vitez and there I said everything as an actress, everything that they had planned in the script. That's not in a quiz show where you, as the host, form the questions yourself and improvise.
What is your biggest fear that could happen in front of the camera?
I did Dobro jutro and these big things Porina, Dora live for three years... when something happens live, there's no more hand-pulling, ironing and repetition. It's a completely different kind of concentration and when we do 5.com with Daniel, there's no repetition. It's a completely different energy when you stop and repeat, etc. Unforeseen situations can always happen. On one Dora, the screen caught fire, our spotlights exploded on Dobro Jutro, sometimes you have a late guest, and once when I was hosting live in Dubrovnik I forgot the text. I like to say everything from memory, so concentration has to be great.
