2024-01-20 15:34:34
by Francesca Scorcucchi
The actress talks about the Netflix miniseries, created by the creators of Narcos: «I know Colombian crime»
The Black Widow, the godmother of drugs. Griselda Blanco, the first and only woman head of a Colombian drug trafficking cartel, had many nicknames and yet, for a long time, she remained in the shadows. Now her story is told by Sofia Vergara and the creators and producers of Narcos, in a six-part miniseries available on Netflix from January 25th.
«I grew up in Colombia in those years and, believe me, I knew all the names of the Colombian drug lords, they were very famous – says Sofia Vergara -, all the men were, but not her. I didn’t know about her until some time ago and this fact struck me a lot. Not even my family had any idea who she was.”
Yet, Vergara admits that that world was not at all distant from his family circle: «My brother was involved in that environment. Unfortunately he made bad choices, he was part of a drug cartel and was killed for it, in Colombia. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about.”
One day Sofia Vergara came across an article: «I was on a flight, I was leafing through a magazine and I found myself reading about this woman who dominated the drug scene between Colombia and Miami for two decades, and then another 22 years passed in a US prison.”
Affiliated to the Medellin cartel, Griselda Blanco’s name begins to appear in searches for the production of another great Netflix success linked to that world: the series Narcos. «We soon realized that we were faced with an extraordinary character – says the showrunner, Eric Newman who, together with the director of all six episodes, Andrés Baiz, oversaw the creation of the series – but telling it within Narcos would have been reductive”.
«Griselda» therefore becomes the next project and the involvement of the Modern Family star seems like a natural step. «I am Colombian like her, an immigrant like her, a single mother who, like her, raised her son alone. I had one, she had four. What really struck me about Griselda was this maternal side of her. How can you be a mother and be so ruthless? In reality, studying her, I realized that she used intelligence and cunning to win over men.”
Indeed, when Griselda also began to be violent and brutal like the men she was dealing with, that’s when her downward trajectory began. «I also realized that her terrible reputation was certainly exaggerated by the stories of the men who feared her».
Sofia Vergara transformed not only physically but also psychologically for the project. Every day she had to undergo three-hour make-up sessions (even with prosthetics), but above all it was her attitude, posture and walk that allowed her to become Griselda. “I ruined my back for her. In my entire career this was the only time I had to miss a day on set for health reasons. That day I wasn’t able to get out of bed unless I was injected with a powerful painkiller.”
The actress does not hide the reservations with which she fought for a long time before deciding to play such a negative character: «I am 51 years old and I know the evils of the world, I knew them even before meeting Griselda and that is why, as much as If this project was interesting, I thought about it for a long time. That woman spent twenty-two years in prison but then she got out. I didn’t want it to be a story with a happy ending.” It was only after her death, which occurred in 2012 in Medellin at the hands of a killer, that Sofia Vergara said yes to the story of Pablo Escobar’s rival, of whom he himself said: «the only man I fear is a woman named Griselda Blanco.”
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January 20, 2024 (modified January 20, 2024 | 2.34 pm)
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