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 Rodr í guez 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.