Sergej Trifunovic: "I Became a Parent" to Panda Poppy
Sergej Trifunovic turns 54 today, and his wife Isidora surprised him with guardianship of a red panda named Poppy from Toronto. He shared the news on Instagram and said he plans to visit her soon.
Actor Sergej Trifunovic turns 54 today, September 2, and the birthday gift his wife Isidora prepared for him is not something you see every day on the Instagram accounts of Serbian celebrities. Instead of a watch, a trip or jewelry, Trifunovic was given guardianship of a red panda named Poppy, who lives at a zoo in Toronto.
The actor announced the news himself on his Instagram profile, alongside a photo of the animal. True to form, he commented on the gift with a dose of self-deprecating irony, calling himself an “angelic little jerk.”
I’ve become the parent of this angelic little jerk too: my dear Isidora made me her guardian for my birthday. Her name is Poppy, a rare red panda, she’s two years old, she lives in Toronto, and I’m going to visit her as soon as I can, Trifunovic wrote in the Instagram post.
The red panda, unlike its far more famous Chinese namesake, is a much smaller animal, roughly the size of a house cat, and is classified as an endangered species worldwide. Guardianship programs like the one Isidora gave her husband typically work as symbolic adoptions, through which a zoo raises funds for the care of a specific animal while the guardian gets the right to visit and follow its progress.
Trifunovic did not specify in his post exactly when he plans to travel to Toronto, but said he wants to do it “as soon as possible.” There is no word on whether he will make the trip alone or with his wife, nor on whether the guardianship includes the chance to see the panda up close, outside the glass and fencing, or only the right to follow how she lives and grows.
According to media reports, birthday wishes from followers quickly piled up under the post, with many comments also directed at Isidora herself, whom followers praised for the unusual gift idea.
Isidora Trifunovic, for her part, only recently found herself the target of comments over a completely different story. On the podcast “Sigurno mesto” (A Safe Place), she spoke in detail for the first time about the circumstances surrounding an alleged coat theft at a Belgrade boutique, an episode that had circulated online for months without her official version of events. That story, however, has nothing to do with the birthday gift and Poppy the panda, except that it shows the couple is once again drawing attention from the Serbian public this week, this time for a far more cheerful reason.
Trifunovic, born in 1972, has built his acting career since the early 1990s. He enrolled at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade in 1990, in the class of professor Vladimir Jevtovic, alongside Natasa Ninkovic, Vojin Cetkovic and Nebojsa Glogovac, and graduated in 1994. Since 2009, he has taught at the same faculty as an assistant in the acting department, working under the same professor who once taught him as a student.
On screen, he left his mark in films such as “Tudja Amerika” (“Someone Else’s America”), “Ubistvo sa predumisljajem” (“Premeditated Murder”), “Spasitelj” (“The Saviour”) and “Bure baruta” (“Cabaret Balkan”), titles that defined Serbian cinema in the 1990s and 2000s. Beyond acting, he has long been an active public voice, often expressing views that spark divided reactions, ones considerably sharper than those triggered by today’s panda news.
It remains unknown whether Trifunovic will update the public on the Toronto trip and his meeting with Poppy with another post, or whether Isidora will join him on the journey. Judging by the reaction online, she has once again shown that she picks gifts differently from most.
