Streaming
Sofia Vergara plays “Cocaine Queen” on the Netflix series
Sofia Vergara, actress of the US series “Modern Family”, comes to the presentation of the 23rd Screen Actors Guild Awards. (Archive image) Photo: Richard Shotwell / Invision / dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
In the Netflix series “Griselda” actress Sofia Vergara takes on the leading role. She will play a Colombian drug baroness in it. Series fans know Vergara from “Modern Family”.
The Colombian-born actress Sofia Vergara (49, “Modern Family”, “Miss Bodyguard”) will portray a notorious compatriot in a Netflix miniseries.
The six episodes of the planned series “Griselda” trace the life of the drug baroness Griselda Blanco, who was the first to smuggle drugs into the USA on a large scale in the 1970s and 1980s and became one of the richest and most feared women in the world. She is said to have commissioned dozens of murders.
Blanco was shot dead in Medellín in 2012
In 1985, Blanco was arrested in the United States and sentenced to 20 years in prison. After her release and deportation in 2004, the mother of four lived withdrawn in Colombia. In 2012, the “cocaine queen” was shot dead in the city of Medellín when the 69-year-old was leaving a butcher’s shop. With her “unscrupulous but ingenious methods”, Blanco built an empire worth billions, long before the later notorious drug barons, Vergara said in a statement. She was considered a pioneer for drug lords like Pablo Escobar, who was shot in 1993, and his Medellín cartel.
“Narcos” creator Eric Newman is one of the producers, and the six planned episodes are directed by Colombian Andrés Baiz (“The Hidden Face”). Vergara, who posted several casting reports on Instagram on Wednesday, is best known for her role in the hit series “Modern Family”. In the sitcom, she played the spirited Gloria from 2009 to 2020.