The late Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar once said, \u201cThe only man I was ever afraid of was a woman named Griselda Blanco.\u201d <\/p>\n
That quote immediately sets the tone of \u201cGriselda,\u201d a highly anticipated limited series premiering Thursday on Netflix.<\/p>\n
Created by \u201cNarcos\u201d and “Narcos: Mexico” producers Doug Miro, Carlo Bernard and Eric Newman and \u201cJustified\u201d producer Ingrid Escajeda, the six-part drama series chronicles the epic rise and fall of Griselda Blanco, played by Emmy-nominated comedy actor Sof\u00eda Vergara. <\/p>\n
Nicknamed \u201cThe Godmother\u201d and \u201cBlack Widow,\u201d Blanco used her lethal blend of natural charisma and unsuspected savagery to amass a vast empire as a cocaine trafficker between Colombia and Miami and become a central figure in the violent Miami drug wars of the 1970s and \u201980s.<\/p>\n
The limited series has been generating headlines of a different sort in the last few days, after Blanco’s only surviving son, Michael Corleone Blanco, and his wife, Marie, filed a suit in Florida’s Miami-Dade County against Vergara, Netflix and others involved in the project for using the unauthorized \u201cimage, likeness and\/or identity\u201d of family members, according to the lawsuit obtained by NBC News and reported on Today.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n They also allege that the show\u2019s producers relied on recorded conversations with Blanco without compensation. The pair are seeking damages \u201cin excess of $50,000\u201d and an emergency temporary injunction to block the limited series’ release.<\/p>\n Netflix and Vergara’s representatives have not responded to requests for comments. Michael Blanco’s legal representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment. <\/p>\n Ahead of the series’ release, several of the series’ creators and one of the actors spoke to NBC News last month. They shared how the show came about, how it centers two powerful women on opposite sides of the law and how it evokes a painful era in Colombia’s historic fight against cartels. <\/p>\n While working on the third season of \u201cNarcos\u201d in 2017, Newman got a call from Luis Balaguer, Vergara\u2019s longtime manager and producing partner, who revealed that she had expressed interest in teaming up with Newman and his team to develop a take on Blanco\u2019s origin story.<\/p>\n Despite having grown up in Colombia in the 1970s and \u201980s and having tragically lost her older brother, who was part of the country\u2019s drug-dealing business, Vergara said in a Q&A provided by Netflix that in the \u201990s she knew very little about Blanco until she read a magazine detailing her life story nearly 15 years ago. <\/p>\n Drawn to the challenge of exploring \u201cthe making of a monster,\u201d Vergara began compiling research in anticipation of the day she could play Blanco, who was released from prison and deported in 2004 and fatally shot in Medell\u00edn in 2012.<\/p>\n Miro, one of the co-creators of \u201cNarcos,\u201d said he was \u201cblown away\u201d by Vergara\u2019s passion for the project and her understanding of what Griselda\u2019s story said about her journey to Miami as an immigrant single mother and her fight to do well for herself and her four children. <\/p>\n Miro, Newman and \u201cNarcos\u201d director Andr\u00e9s Baiz pored over books, documentaries, depositions and news footage to learn more about Blanco and her inner circle, including her hit man, Jorge \u201cRivi\u201d Ayala. <\/p>\n But the most important discovery was June Hawkins, a Miami police homicide detective who played a fundamental role in convicting Blanco of murder and drug trafficking charges. <\/p>\n Whereas past documentarians of Blanco\u2019s life were unable to locate her, Miro and Newman were able to track down Hawkins, now retired, and her husband, who worked together on the case. (Hawkins is played by Juliana Aid\u00e9n Martinez in the series.)<\/p>\n \u201cI tracked her down because the idea that we had this woman who was a narco and we also had a woman who was chasing her was too good to be true,\u201d Miro said. \u201cThose pieces of research are just invaluable and show up in the show. When you watch it, it feels authentic, layered, textured and real, like ‘Narcos,’ which is what we all try and set out to do.\u201d<\/p>\n In \u201cGriselda,\u201d Blanco and Hawkins, both single mothers who are constantly undermined by the men in their life, represent two sides of the same coin, Escajeda said. They \u201ccould have probably been friends in another lifetime, because they could talk about what it\u2019s like to be women in men\u2019s worlds, yet here they were on opposite ends.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a meaty role that Vergara, best known for playing the feisty, fun-loving Gloria Pritchett on the ABC sitcom \u201cModern Family,\u201d has been preparing to play for over a decade.<\/p>\n \u201cGriselda\u201d is a dramatic departure from the previous work of Vergara, who wanted to completely \u201cdisappear\u201d into her interpretation of Blanco, Baiz said. <\/p>\n But instead of imitating Blanco\u2019s real-life appearance, the producers felt it was more important for Vergara to feel like she was simply playing a different person. The creative team used tape to cover her distinctive eyebrows, gave her more restrictive clothing to make her voluptuous figure less prominent and spent about a year and a half experimenting with different wigs and prosthetic noses, forcing Vergara to spend around three hours in the makeup chair every day.<\/p>\n Vergara met with Baiz, who is also Colombian, once or twice a week before filming to understand Blanco\u2019s motivations in each scene. \u201cWe started asking all these questions about Sof\u00eda\u2019s background in Colombia growing up in a very turbulent, violent Colombia from the \u201980s,\u201d said Baiz, who directed all six episodes of \u201cGriselda.\u201d \u201cShe started seeing that there were many aspects of her life that she could use to flesh out the character.\u201d<\/p>\n Vergara and Baiz are not the only ones who share cultural DNA with \u201cGriselda.\u201d The large ensemble cast includes Christian Tapp\u00e1n, who plays Blanco\u2019s accountant, Arturo; Paulina D\u00e1vila and the singer Karol G, who portray two of her most important employees; and Orlando Pineda, who plays her eldest son, Dixon.<\/p>\n Pineda, in fact, shares an even closer connection than most of his castmates. He did not realize until after he had landed the role that his father, now a general in the Colombian military, was responsible for taking down one of the bosses of the Cali cartel, one of Blanco\u2019s direct competitors. <\/p>\n Pineda said his father, who has yet to watch the show but was \u201cvery proud,\u201d was approved by the U.S. government and assigned to lead a special intelligence team specifically formed to take down the cartel. <\/p>\n “This is part of Colombia\u2019s history \u2014 this is something that happened. We can\u2019t ignore it,” Pineda said. <\/p>\n Baiz said that if you are a Colombian actor in the show, “you have an emotional connection to a lot of suffering that we went through in our country, but also, it was just a different time.\u201d<\/p>\n Given that past anecdotes about Blanco tended to be overwhelmingly violent and sensationalized, the producers wanted to stay away from films such as Al Pacino\u2019s 1983 classic, \u201cScarface,\u201d and instead examine the many contradictions of Blanco as a deeply flawed protagonist.<\/p>\n \u201cBy watching her behave like a mother, a businesswoman, a lover, a friend and a criminal, you will want to understand her,\u201d Baiz said. \u201cBut in that process, as the audience, you also would like to understand yourself. \u2026 That\u2019s one thing I really like about antiheroes \u2014 it\u2019s like putting a mirror in front of your face and trying to understand your contradictions, as well.\u201d<\/p>\n Escajeda noted that a lot of “Griselda stories” were written by men. <\/p>\n \u201cThis relationship that she would have with these men was such a fascinating thing, because what was true and what was not?” she said. “All these murders that were attested to her \u2014 was she actually responsible for them? \u2026 Mind you, she was a murderer, there\u2019s no debate to that, but they\u2019d made up these stories that she was just a monster. If they\u2019re not true, why were they made up?\u201d<\/p>\n Since \u201cGriselda\u201d was announced in late 2021, the show\u2019s creative team has faced criticism over a drama that risks perpetuating stereotypes of Latinos as criminals and drug dealers. <\/p>\nTwo women, ‘two sides of the same coin’ <\/h2>\n
‘Part of Colombia’s history’<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"Jose](\"https:\/\/media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com\/image\/upload\/t_fit-760w,f_auto,q_auto:best\/rockcms\/2024-01\/GRISELDA-3-te-240122-e71dfc.jpg\")
<\/picture>Despite stereotypes, a cautionary tale <\/strong><\/h2>\n