Actress Sofía Vergara introduced to homes across the country with a hilarious sitcom Modern FamilyBut earlier this year, the Colombian star took on a much more serious project: she played the notorious drug lord Griselda Blanco in the Netflix miniseries Griselda.
Vergara opened up about the process of taking on the character in an interview on August 14 DiversityVergara had to alter or disguise almost every part of her body in order to become a menacing drug lord.
“Maybe she wasn't a Barbie doll, but the real Griselda Blanco had something; she had a kind of sex appeal that I had to show,” America's Got Talent The judge said.
The most important thing was to ensure that her body was covered as much as possible.
“I didn't want the bounce that's natural for Latin women to show,” she explained. “I had to wrap myself so my ass wouldn't jiggle. I had to wear a really bad bra. I had to cover my arms because I have really skinny arms, and when you have this stupid little arm, you don't look threatening.”
For Vergara, who also produced the series, it was a strictly personal project. Her brother was killed by a Colombian cartel in 1996. “It destroyed my family,” she said. “It destroyed my mother. It completely changed our lives. We didn't know what was going on, why he was killed.”
While portraying Blanco, she originally intended to portray a more human image, but she also had to remember the evil that people like her brother endured.
“I had to control myself, 'Sofía, this woman has just killed hundreds of people and children,'” she recalled. “It was very difficult not to romanticize her or heroize her. She had become a psychopath.”
Griselda is currently streaming on Netflix.