Valeria Mazza

The RAI spotlight and the European leap

In February 1996, twelve million Italians tuned in to watch the Sanremo Festival. On the stage of the Teatro Ariston appeared a 5'10" model born in Rosario who barely spoke Italian, flanked by veteran host Pippo Baudo. The live broadcast peaked at a 70 percent audience share and confirmed an undeniable truth: the television camera wanted her just as much as the lenses of high fashion did.

That night changed the rules of the game for the Argentine model. She had walked for Gianni Versace in Milan, shared shoots with Linda Evangelista and fronted global campaigns for Guess after a childhood spent competing in swimming. But the runway imposed a strict silence that didn't suit her.

Nobody expected her to keep up with the pace of Italian television.

And she held on. The public broadcaster RAI was quick to offer her continuing contracts to make the most of the polished Rioplatense charm she had developed in Europe. In 2001 she hosted the classic Sunday show Domenica In alongside Carlo Conti, a weekly five-hour live marathon that demanded precise control of television time.

Fiction sets and big audiences

Italian commercial cinema came calling at the end of the nineties. Director Neri Parenti cast her in 1998 for the comedy Paparazzi, where she shared the frame with Diego Abatantuono, playing herself in a satire about the gossip press. That foray onto the big screen was deliberately brief. Mazza realized on the film set that the slower pace of fiction filmmaking didn't suit her quick reflexes.

So she turned to pure entertainment formats. She hosted three straight seasons of Fashion MTV for Latin America, interviewing designers in New York and Paris without relying on a teleprompter. Shortly after, Televisión Española teamed her with Ramón García to front the gala El concurso del siglo. Spain discovered a presenter with a measured delivery, a calm accent and an instant stage presence.

She has filmed more than eighty commercial ads for soft drink and cosmetics brands around the world. Her public image worked as a self-sufficient commercial powerhouse, backed by the business management of her husband, Alejandro Gravier, with whom she launched her own eyewear and beauty lines.

But the broadcasting business demanded a different kind of control.

Dismantling the Illusion in Three Episodes

In October 2023, Paramount+ premiered Valeria Mazza: Un sueño dorado. Across three episodes, the docuseries traced her career from provincial tournaments in Entre Ríos to the packed schedules of Manhattan, without shying away from the rivalry the tabloid press stoked for a decade with the German Claudia Schiffer. The production also examined the physical toll of the job and the family impact of the assault her son Tiziano suffered in 2022 outside a nightclub in Rosario.

And the home archive helped bring order to his own story. The project reached free-to-air television in Spain in November 2025 via Divinity, and later became part of the digital lineup of Mediaset Infinity.

In January 2024, Telecinco handed her the hosting duties for the competition Bailando con las estrellas alongside Jesús Vázquez. The production filled a 1,400-square-meter studio with live music, where thirteen well-known couples competed under the scrutiny of a technical jury. The premiere drew a 14.5% audience share and attracted 1,226,000 viewers, winning the Saturday night slot.