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GRISELDA The cocaine godmother of Miami gets a Scarface-adjacent miniseries.
Knowing what I know about narcos-trafficking, it’s unconscionable that a woman would be able to sit on the throne,’ says Eric Newman, co-creator of Netflix hit Narcos and new, thematically connected, miniseries Griselda. It’s what makes the story of Griselda Blanco, aka The Cocaine Godmother, all the more remarkable – she rose to the top of a world more male-dominated than the Catholic priesthood.
Colombian ‘queenpin’ Griselda was a key figure in the Miami cocaine trade in the late 70s and early 80s, earning a fearsome reputation in the process. Six-episode series Griselda, starring Modern Family’s Sofía Vergara, aims to do for Blanco what Narcos achieved for Pablo Escobar – humanise a notorious criminal.
‘Everyone who wrote about her depicted her as an absolute monster. And in my experience, that’s never actually the case,’ says Newman. The reason, he claims, was who got to tell Blanco’s story. ‘There was a misogynistic approach to the story of Griselda Blanco, where she was an irredeemable, unpleasant, ugly beast. And I didn’t believe that was true.’
Narcos veteran Andrés Baiz, himself Colombian, was hired to direct all six episodes and saw nuance where history saw only evil. ‘Griselda doesn’t become a queenpin until late in our show,’ Baiz explains. ‘She’s always struggling to get ahead, and with three kids she always uses the excuse that she’s doing everything for them. So it’s these things that make her complex.’
Ingrid Escajeda was brought on as showrunner, alongside a largely female writing team. But the most important piece was the person playing Griselda herself. ‘Sofía [Vergara] reached out to me, and expressed her passion for playing this woman with whom she obviously has some connection, being Colombian, being a single mother who came to America,’ says Newman. ‘She knew a tremendous amount about it – even more than I knew.’
After 250 episodes of sitcom Modern Family, Vergara may seem an unlikely choice to play an infamous female drug lord, but it’s something Baiz believes works in the show’s favour. ‘It was very brave for Sofía to take on this role,’ the director adds, ‘because she has never really portrayed a dramatic role before. She’s reinventing herself. She’s stepping out of her comfort zone.’
‘It was very brave for Sofía to take on this role’
ANDRÉS BAIZ
As another early 80s, Miami-set, cocaine gangster story, Scarface naturally loomed large, but the more significant touchstones were the less sensational likes of John Cassavetes’ Gloria and The Godfather. Apt given that Blanco named her fourth son Michael Corleone.
‘The Godfather has always informed my shows,’ says Newman. ‘As much as you come to, in some ways, admire what these people have done, and how they’ve vanquished their enemies, at the end of the day it’s always a tragedy. They always end up dead, alone in jail, unloved.’
GRISELDA STREAMS ON NETFLIX FROM 25 JANUARY 2024.