THE RISE AND FALL OF ‘THE COCAINE GODMOTHER’
Sofia Vergara tells Margaret Gardiner what drew her to the role of the ruthless Colombian drug boss Griselda Blanco
“The only man I was afraid of was a woman named Griselda”
PABLO ESCOBAR
How does an uneducated immigrant mother become one of the most ruthless and successful heads of the infamous drug cartel that flooded the US market with cocaine in the 1970s and 1980s? That’s the story of Griselda Blanco, executive produced and starring Sofia Vergara of Modern Family fame.
“I grew up in Colombia during the era that narcotic trafficking was booming. Every cartel boss was a household name. We knew what they were doing and that the US was looking for them. For a woman to get to the level of boss with these men in that environment was incredible. Yet no-one beyond their ranks had heard of her,” says Vergara.
Vergara took the idea to writer Doug Miro, producer Eric Newman and director Andrés Baiz — the executive team behind Narcos, the 2015 critically acclaimed show about Pablo Escobar. Newman explained the appeal: “We’d come across Griselda in our research for Narcos. She was a member of the Medellin cartel and crossed paths with Escobar, the Ochoas and some of the other big traffickers. Little was known about her. She’s the first and only woman we ever encountered in our research who’d risen to her level of prominence in the narcotics business. We wanted to tell her story but couldn’t find a way to work it into Narcos. It needed more real estate than we could give it. So when Sofia reached out and expressed an interest in portraying her, it was irresistible to us,” he says.
The six-part Netflix series is filled with the violence of Narcos. Strangely, it’s also an equal opportunity story — if emulating the savagery synonymous with men involved in drug trafficking can be seen that way. It was a concern for Vergara that shining more light on the drug world would be seen as a glorification of their choices.
“Griselda spent 22 years in jail in the US before being released. She was murdered in the street in 2012 in Medellin,” says Vergara. Yet there were aspects of her life that connected with the actress. “I could relate as a Colombian, a single mother, an immigrant. I raised my son, Manolo [now 32] alone. I’ve been working since I was very young. This made me realise I could play her. My brother was part of the narco traffic and was killed in Colombia. I knew how it felt.” She pushes her long, dark hair aside, looking into the distance. “I know how families get destroyed. The country suffers, and the people around the cartels. It’s not just the people doing the illegal things. The pain and horrific situations spread.
“As an actress, I wondered why a mother would do these things. That’s what made me so interested. It wasn’t men trying to get power and money. It was a mother of four kids. Initially, Griselda began by using wit and intelligence against men who were using brutality and threats of violence. Later, she emulated their behaviour, and that was her downfall.”
Griselda was known as “The Cocaine Godmother”, says Vergara.
“And ‘Cocaine Queen of Miami’,” adds Newman. “Much of her reputation came from men trying to explain this anomaly: a woman as good as them, that they were afraid of.”
Escobar said about Blanco, “The only man I was afraid of was a woman named Griselda.” This quote opens the limited series.
“She became the bogeyman,” says
Newman. “The trafficking world was exclusively male and it intersected with law enforcement, which, at that time, was also almost exclusively male. In this show, we have a female cop pursuing Griselda. In some ways they both share this fantasy nightmare.”
Being a woman in a man’s world is something Vergara knows a thing or two about. “In the beginning, you root for Griselda,” says Vergara. “Until she squanders her support.”
The Latina beauty with the bodacious body had to disappear to portray the titular character. “Sofia spent three hours a day every day in the makeup chair, followed by 10 hours of work, then another hour removing it,” says Newman. The prosthetics and makeup render her beauty almost unrecognisable. “I changed the way I moved and danced,” says Vergara. “I had to learn how to smoke and do narcotics [not for real].”
Newman adds: “Her physical transformation was so extreme that there were times I worried about her health because she was walking all stooped over. It’s very different from Sofia’s posture.”
“I destroyed my back,” says Vergara. “There was a day when I couldn’t get out of bed. They gave me an injection and I was back at it. The doctor told me, at 50 you can’t be walking like that and not expect things to happen.” She laughs. “It was a small price to pay for this series.”
’Griselda’ is showing on Netflix