Why Sofía Vergara needed to ‘uncover the deeper story’ behind the Colombian drug lord in new Netflix hit collection

Sofía Vergara’s portrayal of infamous Colombian drug lord Griselda Blanco in Griselda has rapidly turned the mini collection into considered one of Netflix’s most-talked about new reveals.

The six-part restricted collection, which premiered on Jan. 25, reached No. 1 on the streaming service’s Top 10 television chart in the U.S. in addition to its Global Top 10 chart for English-language shows, garnering greater than 20 million views for the week of Jan. 22-28. It was additionally the most-watched English-language present in 89 nations — together with Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Colombia — throughout that very same time interval.

Along with starring in it, Vergara is the manager producer on the undertaking, which follows Blanco from when she moved to Miami within the late Nineteen Seventies as a single mother to when she turned one of the vital distinguished bosses within the cocaine drug commerce. The true Blanco — who was identified by quite a lot of nicknames, together with the Black Widow and the Cocaine Godmother — was shot dead in 2012 in Colombia at age 69.

It’s a task far faraway from Gloria Delgado-Pritchett, the fun-loving, feisty mom Vergara performed on the ABC sitcom Modern Family. Admittedly, that’s what attracted the Colombian-born actress to play Blanco within the first place.

“I needed to problem myself, as a result of Griselda Blanco is such a fancy character,” Vergara said about the role. “She’s not a hero, and lots of the issues she did had been very horrible. However she was additionally very attention-grabbing. There have been so many nuances to discover by way of who she actually was — as a cartel chief and a fearless enterprise girl in Miami within the ’70s, and naturally, as a lady, as a mom. That was not a really normal combine. She was somebody who did no matter it took to guard her household.”

Vergara stated discovering Blanco’s humanity was part of her course of.

“We had been very cautious to not glorify her within the collection, however we additionally needed to take time to uncover the deeper story of Griselda,” the actress defined in a Netflix press assertion. “How past all odds, a poor, uneducated girl from Colombia managed to create a large, multibillion-dollar empire in a male-dominated business, in a rustic that was not her personal, by way of techniques that she devised that had been each ingenious and merciless.”

Discovering Griselda

Blanco’s rise within the cocaine trafficking ring based by fellow Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar has been dramatized earlier than, most lately within the 2017 Lifetime film Cocaine Godmother: The Griselda Blanco Story starring Catherine Zeta-Jones, the 2006 documentary Cocaine Cowboys and the 2021 Netflix docuseries Cocaine Cowboys: The Kings of Miami. In 2019, Jennifer Lopez was reportedly in talks with STX to play the drug lord in an upcoming undertaking.

Vergara informed the New York Times that it wasn’t till 2015 that she was prepared pitch the collection to Narcos showrunner Eric Newman.

“It’s laborious for me to search out characters due to my accent, and since I’m identified for comedy. So in a egocentric method I used to be like, ‘Oh, that is good for me,’” she informed the outlet. “I used to be like, ‘What are the chances that this man goes to suppose that Gloria Pritchett can play this [expletive] ruthless, loopy character?’”

It was a match made in heaven. Since the first image of Vergara as Blanco was launched in January 2022, the actress’s bodily transformation into the Cocaine Godmother has been an ongoing dialog.

Nailing the look completely was vital to Vergara.

“I wanted to vanish,” she stated within the press assertion. “I needed nobody to think about me or my final function as Gloria Pritchett. I needed to get inside Griselda’s head and actually perceive her mentality, the place she was coming from.”

On the Jan. 24 episode of The Kelly Clarkson Present, Clarkson praised the hair and make-up workforce for giving Vergara what gave the impression to be a “seamless” makeover — although the actress was fast to level out it was something however.

“I really feel like they solely modified your nostril or one thing,” Clarkson stated.

“What? Are you loopy?” Vergara replied. “They did lots to me! It was tooth, it was [a] wig, it was [a] nostril. It was plastic from right here to right here.”

Clarkson clarified, “They did such an excellent job that it appeared seamless.”

The function additionally proved greater than bodily transformative for Vergara.

“It was paralyzing to me to grasp that this girl actually existed whereas she was elevating 4 children, and I’m like, ‘Why did I by no means [hear] of her?’” she informed Clarkson. “I lived in Colombia in that period — the ’70s, the ’80s, the ’90s. My brother was sadly a part of that enterprise. He obtained killed in Colombia. I knew that character so effectively. How did none of us find out about her existence?”

Audiences can’t get sufficient

Griselda followers are rising extra fascinated with Blanco’s life not simply due to Vergara’s efficiency, but additionally due to a collection of memorable advertising stunts.

In a now-deleted clip initially revealed on Netflix France’s Twitter account, a Griselda-themed bus is seen driving down a Paris road with a large straw latched on the entrance. As seen within the video, the straw sweeps up the white traces on the road as if it had been snorting cocaine.

In one other stunt, the Netflix advertising workforce arrange a show at an airport baggage declare that had suitcases with pretend cash protruding of them. Positioned beside are brown packages that appear to painting deliveries of cocaine.

“Okay however the griselda advertising workforce wants a elevate,” one person wrote on TikTok alongside a clip of the airport show.

Griselda is now streaming on Netflix.

This text comprises affiliate hyperlinks; in case you click on such a hyperlink and make a purchase order, we could earn a fee.