Sofia Vergara has opened up about the family tragedy that inspired her to play Griselda in the Netflix hit.
Sofia underwent a huge transformation to embody the character of Griselda Blanco who is based on the real-life Colombian drug lord.
The 51-year-old was inspired to leave light-hearted comedy behind for the brutal crime drama as she can personally resonate with it.
The show opens with a quote from Pablo Escobar, Colombia’s most notorious criminal: “The only man I was ever afraid of was a woman named Griselda Blanco.”
Although Sofia is a former dental student from a good family she could still draw on parallels to the ‘Cocaine Godmother,’ as they have both experienced devastation caused by drug cartels.
The actress lost her brother Rafael, 26, when he was murdered by drug gangs in Colombia in the late 1990s as part of an attempted kidnapping.
Sofia recalled: “Unfortunately, in Colombia at that time, the tentacles of narco traffic were everywhere, 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.”
Sofia continued: “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.”
“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,” she added.
The actress also spoke about the importance of her career to her and what her big earnings mean to her.
“It is important to me that I’ve been able to help my family in Colombia and that I don’t have to rely on anyone. That I can actually fall in love with someone,”
She adds, “I mean, I was pretty when I was young, so I could have gone down the route of being a trophy wife.”
