- Sofia Vergara stars in the Netflix series Griselda, about Colombian drug lord Griselda Blanco.
- To play the role, Vergara underwent physical changes, including wearing an artificial nose.
- She also had her teeth yellowed and her hair flattened to achieve that look.
When you think of Sofia Vergara, you might think of Gloria Delgado-Pritchett, the glamorous firecracker from the long-running sitcom Modern Family.
But in “Griselda,” released Thursday on Netflix, Vergara transforms into Colombian drug lord Griselda Blanco.
According to a report in the New York Times, Vergara pitched the series to Narcos showrunner Eric Newman in 2015, three years after the infamous “Cocaine Godmother” assassination.
Newman and Narcos co-creator Andres Bize have signed a deal, with the series announced in 2021.
“She knew a lot about this woman,” Buys told the Times. “And she really felt that there were parts of her story that hadn't been explored on screen before.”
The six-part series follows Blanco's life from the time she moved to Miami as a single mother in the late 1970s.
The empire she builds there attracts the attention of June Hawkins, played by Juliana Aiden Martinez, one of Florida's first female homicide detectives.
Here's how Vergara transformed into a real-life Cocaine Queen with the help of makeup, prosthetics, and really, really flat hair.
Vergara wanted to distance herself from her 'Modern Family' character
Vergara and her fellow producers knew that in order for viewers to separate her from her popular “Modern Family” character, she would have to undergo a significant physical transformation.
According to production notes provided to Business Insider, some trial and error was required as the team workshopped several different hair and makeup designs.
Newman, the series' creator and executive producer, said in a statement: “There were some tests, some that were a little too extreme and some that were maybe not quite enough, but we were able to get to a really great place. ” he said. .
The research team even turned to facial prosthetics to try to hide some of the star's prominent natural features.
“The important differences that gave Sophia confidence were her eyebrows, her nose, and her hair,” said Bays, the show's director.
“She wanted to feel like a different person, but not so much that her performance was taken over by prosthetics and makeup,” he added. “It had to be subtle.”
“It was very important to me to get the look right because I needed to disappear,” Vergara said.
“I didn't want anyone to think about me or my last role as Gloria Pritchett. I wanted to get inside Griselda's head and really understand her mentality, where she was coming from. It is.”
Makeup artist Todd McIntosh, whose previous credits include Buffy the Vampire Slayer, was part of the team tasked with coming up with the right look.
“It's all about taking her completely exotic face and turning it into an average face,” McIntosh said.
McIntosh and Angela Nogaro, the show's head of make-up and hair, gave her a prosthetic nose, replaced her thick eyebrows with thin, period-appropriate ones, and changed her straight white teeth into a slightly uneven, slightly arched one. I decided to cover it with plywood.
“She smokes cigarettes throughout the show, so her bottom teeth are also a little yellow,” McIntosh noted.
According to a report in the NYT, Vergara spent three hours a day sitting in the makeup chair.
wig didn't work
Hairstylist Kelly Klein, who worked with Dennis Parker in the hair department, said there were a few missteps before getting the hair done.
“Every time we tried to make her hair bigger, or more accurately her hair thicker, she ended up looking too beautiful,” Klein said.
In the end, they decided to keep the hairstyle flat. This gave the finished look the realism it needed.
“So all the hairstyles are flatter and smaller than they really are to make her look more authentic, as opposed to Sophia wearing a wig,” Klein said.
The team's collaborative efforts ultimately paid off, with showrunner Ingrid Escajeda sharing her reaction when she saw the actors coming out of the makeup trailer.
“I remember walking out on the first day of filming thinking, 'Wow, it's Griselda,' and underneath the prosthetic leg, Sofia's natural charm shined through,” she said.
