A Personal Loss Motivated Sofía Vergara To Take On Griselda Blanco

Though she was hugely successful portraying Gloria Delgado-Pritchett in ABC’s laugh-out-loud hit series Modern Family, Sofía Vergara had her heart set on one day taking on the role of the ruthless Colombian drug lord Griselda Blanco Restrepo.

It would be more than 15 years before Vergara would have the chance to prove she has serious acting chops. She is dynamic in the six-episode Netflix limited series Griselda and it’s hard to believe this is her first-ever dramatic acting role.

Griselda is executive produced and created by Narcos and Narcos: Mexico showrunner Eric Newman. He co-created the series alongside Doug Miro, Ingrid Escajeda, and Carlo Bernard. Andrés Baiz directed all six episodes.

The streamer describes Griselda as a dramatization inspired by Blanco. The fictionalized story covers her life in Miami’s underworld in the 1970s and ‘80s when she climbed to the top of the male-dominated drug-dealing industry.

In a recent interview, Vergara talked about first learning about Blanco in 2006 while watching a documentary. She was still in the early days of her Modern Family fame. The show was such a hit that the network continued to renew it, and the comedy aired from 2009 to 2020. Though she was well regarded for her humor, Vergara is tenacious and she was determined to someday take on the dramatic acting challenge.

She described watching that documentary and connecting to Blanco for personal reasons. “I grew up in the seventies, eighties, and nineties, which was the time in Colombia when the narco traffic was booming. I was there. I was part of it. My brother was part of it. My brother was killed in the nineties,” she said, looking away briefly, reliving that loss. “Then I heard a woman’s name and I thought it was an exaggeration. We had never heard of a woman being a part of this.”