Masza Wągrocka, the violinist who guarded her wrists until Netflix made her a fighter

Masza Wągrocka

Photo via The Movie Database (TMDB)

Born	October 3, 1992 Warsaw, Poland
Occupation	Actress
Known for	Mother's Day, The Getaway King
Awards	Main acting prize, 35th Festival of Theatre Schools in Łódź

For most of her working life Masza Wągrocka kept her hands out of harm’s way. She is a violinist by training, and she has said she steered clear of any sport that could injure her wrists. The role that finally carried her name beyond Poland asked for the opposite. Kamila “Kama” Barska, the lead of Netflix‘s The Mothers of Penguins, is a mixed martial arts fighter who takes punches for a living and then meets the one fight her fists cannot settle: her small son’s autism diagnosis.

That distance, from the careful musician to the woman throwing elbows in the cage, is the shortest way into her career. Wągrocka was never the obvious casting. She arrived at the part late, after what she called a very long search for the lead, and spent the shoot half convinced someone had got it wrong. Her next move is a different kind of test: whether the actress viewers met as Kama can be somebody else on the same platform.

She was born Marta Wągrocka in Warsaw on 3 October 1992; Masza is the diminutive that became her professional name. Music came first. She graduated in violin from the Grażyna Bacewicz music school complex in the capital, then spent two years in the vocal and acting department of the Stanisław Moniuszko Academy of Music in Gdańsk, training for musical theatre. She has described herself in those years as a terrible swot who was surprised to find she no longer knew her song lyrics by heart and looked forward to acting classes more than singing ones. She left Gdańsk for the Aleksander Zelwerowicz Theatre Academy in Warsaw and graduated in 2018. While still a student she won a Ministry of Culture scholarship and the main acting prize at the Festival of Theatre Schools in Łódź.

The stage claimed her first. She joined the ensemble of the National Theatre in Warsaw, Teatr Narodowy, in 2017, and played in Mickiewicz’s Dziady, Chekhov’s Three Sisters and a staging of Olga Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob. The singing found a home in the Polish premiere of the musical Once at Teatr Muzyczny Roma. Out of sight, she built a second trade in Polish dubbing booths, voicing Nakia in Black Panther, Art3mis in Ready Player One, the title character of Alita: Battle Angel and Sabrina Glevissig in The Witcher.

Screen work came in supporting pieces. She played Tamara Lenartowicz in the series Zakochani po uszy, Zosia, the fiancée of Moryc Szapiro, in The King of Warsaw, police sub-inspector Ula Urbańska in the crime series Krucjata, Tereska in Najmro, the comedy about the communist-era escape artist Zdzisław Najmrodzki, and Dorota in A Night at the Kindergarten. They were the parts of a dependable ensemble player: the fiancée, the friend, the colleague who walks into the scene and out of it.

The Mothers of Penguins changed the scale. Created by Klara Kochańska-Bajon, who has said it grew out of her own experience as a parent, and co-directed with Jagoda Szelc, the series follows Kama after her seven-year-old son Jaś, played by Jan Lubas, is diagnosed and moved to a school for children with disabilities. Wągrocka told Dziennik.pl that casting closed in May and cameras rolled in July, which left her about two months to become credible as a fighter. Because the arena was only free at the end, Kama’s biggest bout was filmed on the last day of the shoot, so she had to hold that condition from May to November. She described adrenaline, short nights and a calorie deficit, and on Polish Radio named the reduction diet as the hardest part. “Every day after training I thought they had made a mistake giving me this role,” she said.

The children set the tone on set. Each had a carer, and a dedicated children’s director, Magdalena Glapińska, ran their days. Wągrocka’s method with her young co-stars was plain honesty, never promising a break she could not deliver. “Children have such a radar for sincerity that they know who is fooling them and who isn’t,” she said. The series became a Netflix hit at home, won the Polish Film Award, the Eagle, for best series and made a New York Times critic’s list of the best international shows of the year. Wągrocka herself was nominated for a Telekamery award in the Olśnienie category, the prize for a breakthrough.

The praise came with an objection that sticks to the show and, by extension, to her. Part of the Polish response found it too Warsaw, too comfortable a capital-city version of a struggle that many families face with less money and fewer specialists. Wągrocka answered on Polish Radio that a heavier series might have found no audience at all, and that the point was to show such a situation can happen to anyone. Both things can be true. The warmth that let so many viewers sit through a story about disability is also what some viewers distrusted. The risk for her is narrower and more personal. A role this physical and this specific can become the only thing casting directors see. She took a six-month break after the first season and turned down at least one series offer, which bought distance from Kama but postponed the proof that she can be someone else. The screen work since has been supporting again: Ludwika, the composer’s sister, in Michał Kwieciński’s Chopin, a Sonata in Paris opposite Eryk Kulm, Róża in MIŁO. and a minister’s secretary in Zaprawdę Hitler umarł.

She keeps her private life out of the papers. Asked by Vogue Polska whether months among the show’s families had made her think about motherhood, she said the responsibility drew her in, but that fear came with it, and named the climate crisis and war among the reasons.

The calendar now does the arguing. The second season of The Mothers of Penguins arrived on Netflix on 21 October 2026, jumping ahead about a year and a half: Kama, Ula, Tatiana and Jerzy, with Barbara Wypych, Magdalena Różczka and Tomasz Tyndyk back beside her, open a school of their own, Biegun Szczęścia, and walk straight into bureaucracy and money trouble. Two weeks later, on 4 November, Netflix releases Anaesthesia, or Znieczulenie, billed as the first Polish medical drama the platform has made entirely in-house. Łukasz Ostalski directs; Leszek Lichota plays a neurosurgeon exiled to a provincial hospital after a failed operation, and Wągrocka plays Ada Dąbrowska in a cast with Dorota Kolak, Karolina Gruszka and Aleksandra Popławska.

Netflix has said nothing about who Ada Dąbrowska is, and that silence suits the moment. Wągrocka has admitted she sometimes misses Kama. In November viewers will find out whether they can watch her without looking for the fighter.

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Tags: actors, actresses, Polish cinema, Magdalena Różczka, The Mothers of Penguins, Klara Kochańska-Bajon, Leszek Lichota, Masza Wągrocka

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