Nuria Roca

Nuria Roca Granell never set out to be an actress or a studio star. She was studying Technical Architecture in Valencia and ended up at a casting call for Canal 9 to fund the end-of-year trip for her university class.

Chicho Ibáñez Serrador saw something in that direct, natural screen presence and signed her on 1998 to host Waku Waku. Late-1990s mainstream TV chewed through new faces at a brutal pace, but she avoided the trap of the disposable presenter thanks to a precise, unpretentious verbal style.

That ease set off alarms across national fiction.

Moving to the Film Set and Globomedia's Comedy

In 2002, Emilio Aragón was looking for a female lead for Javier ya no vive solo on Telecinco. He needed an everyday personality with broad popular appeal, able to hold its own in socially observant comedy alongside supporting actors seasoned in theater. Nuria took on the role of Sofía Castelló for twenty episodes in prime time.

TV critics viewed her signing with the usual skepticism reserved for entertainment faces who cross over into acting. But the camera picked up a notable comic truth in her lines, far from the mannerisms of the classic dubbing style that weighed down so many Spanish productions of those years.

She appeared in 7 vidas on 2001 and later on Moncloa ¿dígame?, testing the audience's scrutiny in the studio. She quickly understood how the technical machinery of serial fiction worked, where floor marks matter more than instinct.

Those were years of training amid clapperboards and two-thousand-watt spotlights.

Later, big-format game shows kept her busy for almost two decades. It took a script with some edge to bring her back to a dramatic set.

Fiction's Scalpel and the Theater Stage

In 2021, Félix Sabroso handed her the script for La gran depresión to share the stage with Antonia San Juan. She made her stage debut with a biting play about the decline of social success, touring theaters across Spain with shows that sold out weeks in advance.

Her move into TV drama came in 2022 with the fourth season of Madres. Amor y vida. She played Blanca Robledo, a surgeon overwhelmed in the operating room and broken in her personal life, a complete departure from the friendly smile the average viewer associated with her image.

To make the surgical scenes believable, she memorized real protocols and maneuvers with medical instruments instead of using hand doubles in the medium shots.

The shoot wiped out the industry's prejudices.

In February 2021, she took over hosting El Hormiguero during Pablo Motos's medical leave and averaged a 21.6% share with more than 3.3 million viewers. That October, she launched The Rock on La Sexta, a Sunday show with a four-and-a-half-hour production schedule, broadcast live.