Vergara transforms inside and out in ‘Griselda’
Actor steps out of comedic comfort zone to take on role
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 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.
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 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 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.
The show materialized at a point of transition in her career — as “Modern Family” ended its run — and, now, it arrives at another point of transition — this time, in her personal life: Vergara split from her husband, actor Joe Manganiello, after seven years of marriage. She fidgets as she reflects on it.
“I was with this person for nine years,” she said. “I’m trying to adapt again. I’m 51, so it’s not easy, but it’s been good. And to have people see me in another role because everybody recognizes me as Gloria and nothing else because I haven’t really done anything but comedy — it is like a new chapter for me in every way.”
Figuring out how to prepare for the role and find her way into Blanco, Vergara says, was the most daunting hurdle.
To create a process for herself ahead of filming, Vergara met with Baiz a couple of times a week, and she enlisted acting coach Nancy Banks to find new depth in discerning her character’s motives through intense script analysis. It provided an opportunity for Vergara to draw from her own life. Born in Barranquilla, Colombia, she and her siblings were raised in a middle-class home by her father, a cattle farmer, and her mother, a homemaker. She grew up during the height of the country’s narcoterrorism era and is all too familiar with the crime and violence linked to it. Her older brother, Rafael, was killed in Colombia in 1998 during an attempted kidnapping.
“The night before I was going to start shooting, I was sitting down in the living room and I thought: ‘Why the (expletive) did I think I could do this?’ ” she says. “‘Just because I put on a rubber nose, they’re not going to know that Gloria Pritchett is talking?’ They’re going to say, ‘Who does she think she is?’ ”
Her son, 32-year-old Manolo Gonzalez Vergara, however, encouraged her to keep going. “Manolo said to me: ‘You can do this. You have it in you.’ ”
“I guess he was right because when I was in those scenes, it was like anger and a lot of things about my upbringing and where I come from and who I am,” she says. “I knew those people. My brother was in that business. I knew those feelings. And I understand (Blanco) because all those people that have done really bad things, they’re not all the time bad. They think they’re doing the right thing for people. It’s absurd, yeah, because they’re doing horrible things, but I knew the mentality.”
Vergara is aware that she may be ridiculed for saying she understands Blanco’s story. She’s careful when she talks about the parallels to Blanco and her own journey as a single mother in a new country, trying to set up a new life.
“I’m not a killer, but I am a mother; I am Colombian,” Vergara says. “I think that at the beginning, she had the right intention of surviving and being strong and being a mother. But she had something bad inside her because she went harder than any narc guy. She was ruthless. She was a very complicated character.”
Understanding who Blanco was is one thing. Then there is the matter of looking like the Colombian drug lord. Tap Blanco’s name into an internet image search and the results are populated with a 1997 police mugshot: she’s in her mid-50s, with her gray hair pulled back, accentuating a round face stretched by pudgy cheeks and a cleft chin. But Vergara portrays Blanco years before the hard life caught up to her.
To evoke Blanco, Vergara spent three hours in hair and makeup daily, being outfitted with a prosthetic nose. Anticipating comparisons or criticisms about her physical appearance, Vergara explains what she turned her focus toward.
“I couldn’t become (Griselda) exactly. But I wanted to disappear. I wanted Gloria Pritchett to disappear . ... I think it worked because I didn’t try to become her. I tried to become a woman of that era.”
Baiz says one of the appeals of directing the series was to be part of Vergara’s transformation and metaphorically take her hand and guide her to becoming Blanco.
“The thing that impresses me is that she came into this project knowing she was going out of her comfort zone, knowing this was going to challenge her,” Baiz said. “I think people are going to be surprised by what she did in ‘Griselda.’ ”