\n<\/p>\n
When Sof\u00eda Vergara invited the \u201cNarcos\u201d showrunner Eric Newman to her home in Los Angeles in 2015 to pitch a TV show about the Colombian drug lord Griselda Blanco, she\u2019d done her research.<\/p>\n
\u201cI watched the \u2018Cocaine Cowboys\u2019 documentary in 2006, and I was like, \u2018Wow, this character has so many layers,\u2019\u201d Vergara, 51, said of Blanco, the kingpin who was suspected of being involved in more than 200 murders<\/a> before being shot dead in her hometown, Medell\u00edn, in 2012 at age 69.<\/p>\n The facts of Blanco\u2019s life \u2014 the murders, the kidnappings, the tense backroom meetings with drug bosses \u2014 hardly needed embellishment for TV. But what had so hooked Vergara, she said, was the idea that \u201cthis innocuous-looking woman was raising four kids while building this insane, brutal empire.\u201d<\/p>\n She knew it would be a tougher sell to persuade people that after a little over half a decade portraying the feisty, fun-loving mother Gloria Delgado-Pritchett on the ABC sitcom \u201cModern Family,\u201d Vergara was the right person to play the cutthroat Blanco.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI was like, \u2018What are the odds that this guy is going to think that Gloria Pritchett can play this [expletive] ruthless, crazy character?\u2019\u201d Vergara, who is Colombian, said in a recent phone conversation from London.<\/p>\n But her passion for the material, her biographical overlap with Blanco and her confidence convinced Newman \u2014 and soon the Colombian director Andr\u00e9s Baiz, who worked with Newman on Netflix\u2019s Medell\u00edn cartel series \u201cNarcos\u201d \u2014 that she could pull it off.<\/p>\n Both, Baiz said, were driven, ambitious women who had immigrated to the U.S. from Colombia and ascended to the top of their industries. Both had grown up in a misogynist culture. Both, Baiz said, shared \u201can unstoppable, fierce quality.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe knew so much about this woman,\u201d Baiz said from Bogot\u00e1 in a recent video call, which Newman also joined from Santa Monica, Calif. \u201cAnd she felt strongly that there was a part of her story that hadn\u2019t been explored onscreen before.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Of course, Blanco\u2019s rise and downfall as a boss in the fearsome drug trafficking syndicate founded by Pablo Escobar in 1976 had been dramatized before, most recently in the Lifetime movie \u201cCocaine Godmother\u201d (2017), which starred Catherine Zeta-Jones, and in \u201cCocaine Cowboys\u201d (2006). Although HBO announced in 2016 that it was developing a Blanco biopic that would star Jennifer Lopez<\/a>, the project has yet to come to fruition.<\/p>\n Amid a landscape of South American narco tales that had been made mostly by white producers, Vergara had something different in mind. She envisioned a story told half in English and half in Spanish, with a majority-Latino cast, that put female characters front and center. Vergara would executive produce and star, with Baiz directing all six episodes. \u201cGriselda\u201d premieres Thursday on Netflix.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s hard for me to find characters because of my accent, and because I\u2019m known for comedy,\u201d Vergara said. \u201cSo in a selfish way I was like, \u2018Oh, this is perfect for me.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Rather than tracing Blanco\u2019s life story, as the other projects had done, \u201cGriselda\u201d focuses narrowly in the late 1970s and early \u201980s, starting with her arrival in Miami as the newly single mother of three sons. As she builds her empire, she is trailed by June Hawkins (Juliana Aid\u00e9n Martinez), one of the first female homicide detectives in Miami, who worked to bring Blanco down.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cHer story offered a mirror to Griselda\u2019s story,\u201d Newman said of Hawkins. \u201cBoth were single mothers of Latin descent who found themselves rare women in similarly male-dominated fields.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Martinez, a Colombian American actress who was born in Miami, said that it was gratifying to be part of a project that centered the stories of its female characters, including Blanco\u2019s friend and confidante Carla, a sex worker who is played by the Colombian pop star Karol G, in her acting debut.<\/p>\n \u201cThe world understands the story of Griselda Blanco as something that is fiction, but we as Colombians see that story in a different way,\u201d Karol G said in a recent phone conversation from Los Angeles. \u201cIn every family there is a story about someone who passed away because of Pablo Escobar or Griselda Blanco.\u201d<\/p>\n