Sofía Vergara Recalls Challenge of Bringing ‘Griselda’ to Screens: ‘He’s Going to Laugh in My Face’

All in all, it took 15 years for Sofía Vergara to produce and star in the hit Netflix crime drama “Griselda,” which led to an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. Sitting down for a video interview with IndieWire, she said that before she had any idea what the project could be, Vergara had a strong connection to Griselda Blanco’s story. “I just love that character because she was Colombian. I’m a mother, I’m Colombian. Of course, I have not killed any of my husbands, but I would understand why she had to do it,” she said with a laugh.

Though her success as a four-time Emmy nominated actress on one of the biggest sitcoms in the world is what made it possible for her to shop her idea around, Vergara began her “Griselda” journey feeling like her “Modern Family” performance was an elephant in the room. “He’s going to laugh in my face. Why is Gloria Pritchett now thinking that she can be the most brutal drug dealer in the world,” said the actress, reflecting on her initial meeting with “Griselda” showrunner Eric Newman, who she pursued after seeing his work on “Narcos.”

Having instead hit it off, Vergara and her fellow “Griselda” producers not only sold the series to Netflix, but confirmed they would be able to keep it authentic. “There was no way that you’re in a room full of only Colombians and they’re speaking in English that was not going to work,” she said of the primarily Spanish language series. “This was super important for me, and I really wanted to be part of it as a producer because one of my main things was to be able, maybe in a selfish way, to work with so many Latin talents,” added Vergara. “I wanted maybe for one of these actors, ‘Griselda’ to become what ‘Modern Family’ became for me — to open doors here in LA, in Hollywood.”

While the role of Griselda Blanco required a full transformation involving prosthetics, posture changes, and the like, Vergara, also operating as a producer, knew that the idea of capturing a mirror image of the infamous drug queenpin would be a dead end. “Griselda was known, but it was not like Jackie Kennedy, that everybody knows her mannerisms, the way she talks and looks,” said the star. “In my mind, it didn’t need to be exactly like her because I looked very different. My height, my size, everything. And this was not a movie, it was going to be a TV show. So I just wanted to create someone from that era, and someone that didn’t look like me or Gloria Pritchett.”

Part of Vergara finding the character meant working with acting coach Nancy Banks, who she pursued based on her work with Jennifer Aniston, another sitcom star who had transitioned into more dramatic roles, and collaborating with “Griselda” director Andrés Baiz on how she would look and carry herself. “I couldn’t find her. We had tests and different noses, different hairs, different eyebrows, and it was not just, ‘Oh, an ugly woman,’ or ‘Oh, a beautiful woman.’ It was someone that was not that beautiful, but had some kind of sex appeal because it was a woman that had men all over her all the time, manipulated men,” said the actress. “Three weeks, I think before we started shooting, we had our last test and I saw her and I’m like, Andy looked at me and we knew immediately that that was Griselda.”

The experience has ultimately been a push-pull. Vergara was mining from difficult personal experience, having lost her brother to the Narco wars of the ‘80s and ‘90s, and was now playing a very dark, complex, dramatic character that meant shooting scenes that were a far cry from her comedy work. “I used to go to set and laugh and have fun [with] lines that are amazing. I was not used to going to my house, exhausted from crying, from cutting heads, from shooting, from screaming,” said the Emmy nominee. “So it was really hard on me, but it was worth it.”