Sofía Vergara first heard of Griselda Blanco — the murderous Colombian crime boss she plays in Netflix’s limited series “Griselda,” a role for which she is now Emmy-nominated — while watching the 2006 documentary “Cocaine Cowboys.” But she didn’t give the villain, known as the Black Widow, much weight. “I grew up in Colombia during the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s,” says Vergara on a call from her Los Angeles home. “We all knew who was who, what drug dealer was doing what, from where. They were household names.”
But not the Cocaine Godmother. Vergara thought “she must have been a mule or the wife of a drug dealer,” never believing the woman had been “at the level of the biggest narco traffic guys.”
Years later, reading about Blanco in a magazine midflight, Vergara got a clearer picture. “I realized she had not been working in Colombia but in L.A. and Miami,” she says. “She was before Pablo Escobar, the Rodríguez Orejuela brothers or the Ochoa brothers, who were the big capos [kingpins] who were known at the time.” She knew then it was a role she could play.
Yes, Blanco was about as far as Vergara could get from the character of Gloria Pritchett, whom she so successfully played on “Modern Family.” But that’s not what initially attracted her. “I wasn’t really thinking, ‘Oh, I’m gonna show them. No! Because I love doing comedy, I love ‘Modern Family,’ I couldn’t be more thankful,” she insists. Vergara — who’d never had any formal acting training at that point — simply needed a character she knew. And she knew Blanco.
“I’m Colombian, I’m a woman, I’m an immigrant, I’m a mother. So, there were a lot of similarities — and, of course, many, many big different things. But there was a lot that was fascinating to me about her,” she continues. “Maybe I don’t want to kill my husband, but I would understand why she wanted to do it [laughter].”
The only problem? Having been released from federal prison in 2004 and deported to Colombia, Blanco was still alive. “I couldn’t romanticize her or make her a hero,” Vergara says. “She was out and about in Medellín.” But once she died (she was murdered in 2012), Vergara says, “I was able to put the story together with an ending.”
If Blanco’s death gave Vergara freedom, discovering Netflix’s “Narcos” gave her a path forward. She knew its creative team would understand the character instantly. But what were the odds they would believe her as one of the most ruthless drug dealers in the world? Turns out, pretty good. Still, “There’s no way Netflix is gonna think Gloria Pritchett is gonna be able to do this,” Vergara says, quickly adding that the network was immediately, completely and surprisingly supportive.
Not until Vergara was mere months from the actual shoot did she become the doubter. “How am I gonna play this?” she remembers asking herself. “I’ve never done anything like that. I didn’t even know if I could cry in front of a camera.” First, she panicked. Then, she enlisted renowned acting coach Nancy Banks, who’s worked with the likes of Margot Robbie and Jennifer Aniston. “The most important thing, for me, was for people to forget about Gloria Pritchett.”
Although Vergara’s hard work with Banks took her a long way, she needed a little more help to get her over the finish line. “I knew I needed to transform myself so that I didn’t look like me or Gloria,” she says, thankful that Blanco’s face isn’t as universally recognizable as that of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis or Princess Diana. “But also, I needed it to look natural and not bother me, because for six months, I was in every single scene for that TV show. Like 16-, 17-hour days. I would be the first one on the set, in the makeup trailer. I couldn’t remove [any of it] during lunchtime — the wig, the nose, the eyebrows or the plastic in the eyes. The only thing I could remove were my teeth.”
But, oh, were those teeth tricky. “I had fake teeth at the top and at the bottom,” Vergara reveals, adding that during the first week of production, they’d fly out of her mouth during scenes in which she barked out orders. “It was crazy funny, but … you can’t be giving orders to kill someone while you’re lisping,” she says laughing. The lower set of dental prosthetics was then nixed, and Vergara was home free.
Acting in her mother tongue — initially anxiety-provoking since she’d never done it — turned out to be a blessing. “I didn’t have to be translating, looking for the words or thinking,” she says. “It was just about tapping into the feelings and the scene. That part I really enjoyed. It was amazing.”
During filming, Vergara and company knew they were working on something special. “Those sets were so spectacular. You really felt like you were in that era,” she says, noting she recognized the scripts and the entire cast were top-notch. “I don’t think anyone was thinking at that point about awards or nominations, but just about doing something that felt really good.”
Yet here Vergara is with her first Emmy nod for a drama. “I actually thought the show was gonna get nominated — not me,” she says with a chuckle. “I didn’t want to get my hopes up, but I was very excited for me, and for everybody else, because it was something really unexpected.”
Vergara has been nominated four times for “Modern Family” without ever taking home the statuette. Can she win for “Griselda”? “To be honest with you, for me, it’s already a win,” she says. “I’m very, very happy. My best reward was at the big premiere Netflix had in Miami, [where the audience] was applauding when Griselda was getting away with the most horrific things,” she says with a laugh.
The actor must have enjoyed her walk on the dark side, because she and “Griselda” co-creator Eric Newman are already working on their next project, likely to become another dramatic limited series. At its heart lies a character “very different than Griselda,” Vergara notes, “but very strong, very powerful too. So that’s exciting.”
