SOFIA VERGARA on new Netflix drama Griselda and her household tragedy

I’m dying,’ proclaims Sofía Vergara, getting into a collection at London’s Corinthia resort in a cloud of Baccarat Rouge 540. The Colombian actress isn’t dying, because it seems. She is solely jet-lagged from the varied continents she’s crossed selling her new Netflix sequence, Griselda, wherein she performs the infamous cocaine boss Griselda Blanco. ‘It’s been a tough week!’ she says.

But if it is a tough week for Vergara, I’m a little bit scared to think about what she is like on type. As quickly as she walks in – carrying a racy black YSL all-in-one set off with diamanté earrings the scale of moons – every part feels sharper, sillier, extra glamorous, extra enjoyable. 

She laughs steadily and swears freely. She likes nothing higher, she tells me, than ‘eating, shopping and talking s***’. It’s not laborious to see how she grew to become the highest-paid actress in Hollywood, enjoying Gloria Delgado-Pritchett by means of 250 episodes of the sitcom Modern Family. Existing in that tiny stratum of celeb the place something she does is information, even the venerable New York Times wrote a chunk about Vergara’s separation from her second husband, actor Joe Manganiello, final 12 months.

But whereas her celeb is assured (profitable America’s Got Talent judging spot, endorsement offers, denims strains), she appears solely too conscious that her fame as an actor rests on simply the one position. ‘I don’t have many choices due to this silly accent that I’ve,’ she says concerning the Hispanicisms that also inflect her speech after almost three many years within the US. 

‘My career has really only been Gloria Pritchett in Modern Family. So for [writer-producer] Eric Newman to believe that Gloria Pritchett could do Griselda Blanco was my lucky moment.’

Vergara is aware of a factor or two about luck. She reportedly earned half one million {dollars} per episode in the direction of the later seasons of Modern Family – in 2020, Forbes ranked her as the best paid actress on this planet, greater than Angelina Jolie’s $35.5 million (£28 million) netted from Eternals and Gal Gadot’s $31.5 million (£25 million) from Wonder Woman 1984, with $43 million (£34 million) that 12 months. I sense that she has at all times had enterprise acumen. 

‘Yes,’ she smiles and touches her earrings. ‘I like money.’ Was that necessary to her? ‘Not that I was the highest paid,’ she stresses. ‘But it is important to me that I’ve been in a position to assist my household in Colombia and that I don’t should depend on anybody. That I can truly fall in love with somebody,’ she provides. ‘I mean, I was pretty when I was young, so I could have gone down the route of being a trophy wife. 

Now that I’m older I’m like: “Why didn’t I do it? Why did I have to work so much?’’’ she jokes.

The vacancy of trophy husband opened up last summer when Vergara announced her impending divorce from Manganiello, after eight years of marriage. It sounds bittersweet. ‘Joe was four years younger than me and he’d never had kids.

He decided he wanted kids and I didn’t want them. It was like: “Imagine, when this child would be ten years old, I’ll be 60-something. 

That’s a grandma!’’’ There was no animosity between them, she stresses, it was simply a case of Manganiello wanting children and Vergara – whose son Manolo with childhood sweetheart Joe Gonzalez is now 32 – not wanting to go through it again.

She becomes a little more serious. ‘I know the sacrifices you need to make to be a good mother. You have to be present. And my career is important to me. I cannot disappear. A lot of people rely on me.’ Becoming a grandmother, however? That appeals. ‘I’m 51, my son is 32. I’m ready to play with my grandson and then when I’m done it’s: “OK, take it. It’s yours!’’’

Sofía with ex-husband Joe Manganiello at last year’s Vanity Fair Oscars party

All of which is to say that while Griselda, produced by the team behind Narcos, is a major departure for her, it already looks like a sure-fire hit. Vergara has gone from a light-hearted family comedy to a brutal crime drama with a personal resonance – her own brother, Rafael, was murdered by drug gangs in Colombia in the late 1990s as part of an attempted kidnapping. He was 26. 

Vergara has also gone from playing a lovable mother to a cold-hearted monster. It opens with a quote from Pablo Escobar, Colombia’s most notorious drug baron: ‘The only man I was ever afraid of was a woman named Griselda Blanco.’ 

The show, which launched ten days ago, sees Blanco, a former prostitute and gangland wife from Medellín, Colombia, arriving in Miami in the late 1970s with her three sons and a kilogram of cocaine stashed in her youngest’s luggage. Initially, all she craves is security and a little American comfort.

But soon she sets her sights on deadlier ambitions and, deal by deal, establishes her own niche in the Miami drugs business – principally by marketing cocaine as a luxury party drugto bored rich white people in tennis clubs and aerobics classes.

If we leave to one side the fact that Vergara used to be a dental student from a good family who has never touched cocaine in her life – ‘honestly, I had to learn how to snort cocaine and smoke cigarettes for this’ – there are many parallels she could draw on. Like most Colombians, she has personal experience of the devastation wrought by the drug cartels. 

It was part of what prompted her move to America. ‘I went for a new job but I was also moving away from the situation in Colombia in the 90s with all the narco traffic. Then my brother was killed not long after I moved to Miami. I didn’t want my son to grow up in that environment.’

The murder of Rafael – the eldest of four Vergara siblings – was devastating for her family. ‘Unfortunately, in Colombia at that time, the tentacles of narco traffic were everywhere,’ she says. ‘I cannot tell you that everyone was a drug dealer, because that’s not true.

But, for example, if you were an architect, who was buying the apartments? If you had a car dealership, who buys the cars? The narcos. You knew who the narcos were. Everything was touched by it. My brother was a nice guy – a good guy. But he took a wrong decision and unfortunately he paid for it. We all paid for it.’

She describes his murder as ‘heartbreaking. When there’s a death of someone super special and a good father and a good brother, it destroys the family. My mother and father were never the same. My other brother, who was very close to him, became an alcoholic and then a crack addict because of the trauma.’

Tragedies like this played out in families across Colombia. ‘I don’t know a single story of a drug dealer who had a happy ending. At some point, they’re in jail, or dead, or running away, or they can never see anyone any more or their whole family is destroyed.’

Vergara first learned about Blanco after she had moved to the US in the late 90s and remembers being astonished that she wasn’t better known back in Colombia. ‘I grew up in the 70s, 80s, 90s, which is when narco traffic was horrible in Colombia. We all knew who they were. They were always in the news. Then, many years later, I read an article about this woman who was a very big drug lord. And I’m like: “A woman can do that? It’s crazy!” So I bought actually .’

Sofia as Colombian drug queen Griselda Blanco within the new Netflix sequence

All the identical, Vergara dismissed the concept of constructing any form of biopic whereas Blanco was alive, as it might look an excessive amount of like she bought away with it. Then, in 2012 – after spending almost 20 years in jail in Florida on drug and homicide prices – Blanco was assassinated exterior a butcher’s store in her hometown in Colombia. She was 69. At this level, Vergara started to toy with the concept of constructing a drama about her. ‘Now there is a story where the bad guy ends up in a bad situation,’ she says.

Then she noticed Narcos on Netflix, the story of the drug cartels and their devastating results on the Colombia she grew up in. ‘I was like: “My god, where are these people? They could totally understand what I want to do with this character.” So I met with Eric Newman and he went crazy.’ Vergara isn’t the primary actor to play Blanco. Catherine Zeta Jones starred within the 2017 film Cocaine Godmother, slated by critics, whereas one other biopic, The Godmother, starring Jennifer Lopez, has but to be launched. However, this model seems like an ideal marriage. 

Vergara forged lots of her favorite Latin American actors within the supporting roles. ‘If this can be for some of them like Modern Family is for me, I’ll be so comfortable,’ she says. And she is magnetic as Blanco. ‘I’m not the form of actress who thinks for those who’re Colombian you may solely play Colombian or in case you are homosexual you may solely play homosexual,’ she says. However, given the aforementioned accent points, ‘Griselda was perfect.’

There are different parallels. ‘I’m an immigrant in the identical approach she was. I used to be a single mom too,’ says Vergara. When she arrived within the US together with her son Manolo, she started engaged on America’s Spanish-language TV networks, that are principally based mostly in Miami.

As we discuss, she makes it clear that what she would like to be doing is extra Modern Family. Eleven years of enjoying the identical character was not lengthy sufficient for Vergara. ‘You know that show Law & Order? That was on for 20 years. I wish that Modern Family [which ended after 11 seasons in 2020]could have been like that because it was so fun and easy,’ she says.

As a lot as she loved the problem of enjoying Blanco, enjoying Gloria was like respiratory for her. Indeed, the character was written particularly for Vergara. The present’s creators, Christopher Lloyd and Steven Levitan, had specified the character ought to be a latest immigrant to the US – however the nationality, the malapropisms, the specifics all got here from Vergara. 

Sofia with Ed O’Neill within the finale of Modern Family

‘You know, usually writers write about what they know. None of the ones in LA had been married to a crazy Colombian woman with a kid – very few had had an experience with a woman like me. But from the beginning, they just got me and started writing so well for Gloria.’ She would do it for ever if she may, she insists. 

‘We had such a great time. It was comedy. While you’re filming, you’re comfortable. You go house comfortable. It was laborious work nevertheless it was wonderful.’

In a way, she made all of it look a bit too straightforward. Often, she has observed, folks appear to imagine that the joke is on her – versus one thing she has helped to create. ‘I’m like, “Can’t they tell that I’m the one that set that up for someone to do the joke on me?” I really like making enjoyable of myself and I really like making enjoyable of individuals and I adore it when the opposite particular person makes enjoyable of me. I discover that even in unhealthy conditions, there’s at all times some comedy in it.’

These days, she has time hanging out with pals. Being fully herself. Is she on the courting apps? ‘No, I wish!’ she says. ‘I’m unhealthy with expertise, so I’m positive I might click on on the flawed ones. I’m open to having enjoyable and assembly folks. It’s solely been six months.’ She pauses. 

‘It’s bizarre, as a result of I’ve now lived longer within the United States than I lived in my nation. But I’m nonetheless very Latin. I work out to Latin music. In my automotive, it’s Latin music. My pals – my shut pals – are both my cousins or those I met at kindergarten. ‘So now I need a husband!’ she provides – earlier than correcting herself. ‘No, I don’t want a husband, I would like one. It doesn’t even should be a husband. A accomplice.’

There it’s once more: that Sofía Vergara metal. What she desires, she will get, sooner relatively than later. Underestimate this girl at your peril.

Griselda is accessible to stream now on Netflix