Sofia Vergara Will Play A Drug Lord In Netflix Limited Series ‘Griselda’

Deadline confirmed, Sofia Vergara will portray Griselda Blanco, a notorious drug lord in the upcoming Netflix limited series.

Griselda, a six-episode limited series is currently in development with Ingrid Escajeda as showrunner and Narcos’ creative team Eric Newman, Doug Miro, Andrés Baiz, and Carlo Bernard. Despite the setting, this series won’t be related to the Narcos franchise.

Based on real events, Sofia Vergara is set to play Griselda Blanco, a drug lord who created one of the most profitable drug cartels. Vergara is also an executive producer of the project.

Griselda Blanco, also known as Cocaine Godmother or Black Widow, was one of the most notorious drug bosses during the ’80s and ’90s. Blanco was one of the most famous women to own her own empire of illegal drug trafficking in the United States. Over more than 20 years of her career, Blanco is believed to have been responsible for as many as 200 murders in cocaine smuggling from Colombia to New York, Miami, and Southern California.

Blanco was born in Colombia in 1943. In the mid-1970s, she and her husband emigrated to the United States with a fake passport, and from there she began building her drug business. But she quickly came on the radar of federal agents, which is why she quickly fled back to Colombia, but she also continued her work from there. During 1984, there were several unsuccessful assassination attempts on her, causing her to flee to the United States again, this time to California. In 1985, she was arrested by DEA agents and then sentenced to prison. Yet, even during her time in prison, she continued to run the business successfully through her son Michael Blanco. In 2004, she was released from prison and deported back to Colombia. She was killed in September 2012 after being hit with two gunshots to the head, she was 69 years old.

This isn’t the first time Blanco’s life story is getting an adaptation. Catherine Zeta-Jones played her in the 2018 movie Cocaine Godmother, and Jennifer Lopez is set to star as Blanco in STX’s biopic with Reed Morano set to direct.