Sofía Vergara transforms herself in `Griselda' and leaves self-doubt behind
The idea began tugging at Sofía Vergara about 15 years ago.
On the cusp of taking on a role that would eventually put her in the vanguard of the highest paid TV actors — as Gloria Pritchett, a hilarious spin on the trophy-wife trope, in ABC's long-running sitcom “Modern Family” — Vergara wasn't yet a star fielding desirable offers.
Griselda Blanco, a Colombian drug lord who may not have been as well known as some of her more famous male counterparts like Pablo Escobar or the Ochoa brothers, despite being just as ruthless and ambitious, first caught Vergara's attention in passing when she watched the 2006 documentary “Cocaine Cowboys.” Some time later, Vergara read an article detailing Blanco's rise and blood-soaked reign, and the female crime boss suddenly became a figure the actor was determined to play.
“I'm always looking for characters because there's not much that I can play with this stupid accent,” she says, playfully poking fun at herself. “I can't play a scientist or be in `Schindler's List.' My acting jobs are kind of limited.”
At the time, she was in a holding deal with ABC, and two of the shows she was cast in were canceled after one season. With her creative career still in bloom, Vergara took a measured approach with her pet project, keeping it on the back burner as she signed onto “Modern Family” in 2009, a career-defining gig that would stretch 11 seasons, earn her four Emmy nominations and set her star power into orbit.
In the midst of it all, Blanco was the character she was reaching for. She read about Blanco obsessively, figuring all the knowledge would serve her well eventually: “I read every single book, every single article, every new note on the internet that came out. For many years, I read and read and read.”
It's easy to understand the intrigue. Known by a number of monikers that evoke mythic status, including La Madrina (the Godmother) and La Viuda Negra (Black Widow), Blanco fled Colombia and rose to the top of the cocaine industry in Miami during the late 1970s, becoming a drug queen among kings. Smuggling tons of cocaine to Miami from Colombia,
the mother of four built a vast drug empire and solidified a viscous reputation as someone who was believed to be the mastermind behind countless homicides during the so-called Cocaine Cowboy Wars in Miami in the `70s and `80s.
In 1985, she was arrested, found guilty of drug trafficking and sentenced to 15 years in federal prison; and later, in 1994, she was indicted on three murder charges — including that of 3-year-old Johnny Castro, who was fatally shot and killed while riding in a car with his father, who was the target. She spent almost two decades in federal prison before she was deported to Colombia in 2004. As if written for a Hollywood ending, she was shot dead in her hometown of Medellín in September 2012, at age 69, by an assassin on a motorcycle — a style of execution that is often credited as her trademark — outside a butcher shop.
Now, after some delay due to the longevity of her hit sitcom, the role Vergara has been eyeing for much of her career has made it to the screen. In “Griselda,” a six-part limited series premiering Thursday on Netflix, Vergara plays Blanco, and the story begins with her fleeing Colombia to Miami with her three sons. She arrives penniless, but tucked in one of their suitcases is a kilo of cocaine — it's a chance to start over. From there, it follows Blanco's precipitous rise and fall as one of the most notorious drug lords ever.
To create the series, Vergara teamed with producer and writer Eric Newman and director Andrés Baiz, both veterans of Netflix's cartel dramas “Narcos” and “Narcos: Mexico.”
“Griselda” is the first test of Vergara's ability to stretch her acting muscles beyond comedy.
Sitting on a couch inside a small holding room at Netflix's offices in Los Angeles, Vergara — who is also a producer on the series — brings an incontrovertible charm when she's in conversation, more warm and upbeat than the character she's just brought to life onscreen.
American Heritage Magazine was once a bi-monthly print magazine with a wide readership. Near the end of some issues was a column with submissions from subscribers called “My Brush with History.” The articles detailed things like readers' meetings with famous historical personages, or how they happened to be present at the moment of some historic event.
I never expected that this column would get any notice outside the readership of this publication. But I've been writing it for, well . . . let's just say for quite a while. And with enough time, especially in the Internet era (when almost anything is just a Google-search away), it's actually gotten notice from a few other folks over the years. This is still surprising, given that whatever ends up here, it's almost always from a court opinion already in print. Nevertheless, in the spirit of “My Brush with History,” for this week here are a few times when this column has — ever so briefly — met with some outsize (or at least outside) notoriety.
A good example is a Wikipedia article about the late historian and university professor (and restaurant critic) Richard H. Collin. In 1974, Collin colorfully lambasted a Louisiana restaurant in one of his reviews, saying that its food, “T'aint Creole, t'aint Cajun, t'aint French, t'aint country American, t'aint good.” The restaurant promptly sued him for harming its reputation.
The dispute made it all the way to the Louisiana Supreme Court, which in 1977 decided that Collin's review was an opinion protected by the First Amendment. I wrote about the case in August, 2012 — and if you check out Collin's Wikipedia biography, there are four references to that column in the footnotes.
So this column is now, um . . .
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Instructions: Celebrity Cipher cryptograms are created from quotations by famous people, past and present. Each letter in the cipher stands for another.
By Wayno and Piraro
By Scott Hilburn