Jordi Cruz

In early 1998, a 21-year-old aspiring actor walked into a dubbing studio in Madrid to voice a rebellious ant. Pixar had just finished the digital animation of A Bug's Life, and the supervisors were looking for a youthful voice without the stuffy delivery of classic dubbing. The role of Flik went to Jordi Cruz Pérez after a quick audition at the microphone.

Two years earlier, he had made his on-camera debut in Club Disney for TVE. The production moved to Telecinco in 1997, and there he learned to handle chaotic live broadcasts with kids on set, script changes on the fly and teleprompter malfunctions. In just twelve months, he racked up more than three hundred hours of live television, a pace unthinkable for a newcomer.

That was a relentless school of technical reflexes.

The Glue in the Maidstone Studios

In September 1998, Disney's European subsidiary signed him to host the Spanish adaptation of Art Attack. The recordings took place at the Maidstone Studios in Kent, England, where the company centralized versions for about ten countries.

The hands seen in the close-up shots weren't his. They belonged to British creator Neil Buchanan, so Jordi had to nail the voiceover timing and replicate every gesture with millimeter precision in front of the green screen. He once recorded eighteen programs in a single work week, repeating explanations with white glue and newspaper without losing his rhythm.

And the formula worked.

That television momentum opened the doors of the major film studios. Between 2001 and 2007, he lent his voice to Fred Weasley in the film adaptations of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. It was six years of coming and going from the dark sound booths at Sonoblok, syncing the lines of the wizard twin.

The Demise of the Morning Slot

In 2005, he signed a long-term contract with Antena 3 to host Megatrix. He shared hosting duties with singer Natalia Rodríguez until 2007, then took over the show solo for another twelve months, mixing comedy sketches with brief interviews with actors passing through Madrid.

But the mainstream channels decided to remove children's programming from their morning schedules in 2008. The network canceled the format after fourteen uninterrupted years on air, and the void that followed was immediate.

The phone stopped ringing.

Because commercial channels tend to drop young faces with astonishing speed, Jordi instead sought refuge in music radio. In 2016, he began a four-year stint as a DJ at Cadena 100, learning to run the mixing board and building a daily relationship with listeners through the microphone.

The Digital Screen and His Own Microphone

In 2020, he published his professional autobiography, titled Don't Believe It. Its pages detail the inner workings of the late-1990s television industry, the precariousness of his early contracts and the disorientation of finding himself off the air after a decade of constant exposure.

That same year, Netflix hired him to co-host the podcast Are You Still There? alongside Samantha Hudson. The project grew to more than one hundred episodes dedicated to discussing movie premieres and catalog titles with a cheeky tone.

So the network offered him a way out of traditional sets. In 2024, he launched Livo, an independent broadcasting channel run from his own studio. The project closed its first quarter with a record of one hundred twenty hours of live broadcasting and a technical crew of just three operators.