Featured Image Credit: Netflix
Topics: Celebrity, Netflix, TV And Film, True Crime, Sofia Vergara
Rhiannon Ingle
Topics: Celebrity, Netflix, TV And Film, True Crime, Sofia Vergara
We've been spoilt rotten for great telly this month and it seems the binge-worthy viewing material Netflix keeps giving us isn't dying down anytime soon.
The latest series to hit the streaming platform stars the likes of Modern Family's Sofia Vergara who underwent a major makeover looking almost unrecognisable following the huge transformation for the crime-drama set to premiere tomorrow (25 January).
In the upcoming six-part series, from the creative minds who brought us Narcos, Vergara takes on the role of Queenpin, Griselda Blanco, and her journey from Medellín to becoming 'the Godmother' of Miami's drug empire.
Check out the official trailer here:
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It's not only Pablo Escobar and El Chapo who hold the statuses as the world's major drug Kingpins, as one far-lesser known woman once took on the Queenpin title in the cocaine industry.
Griselda was once a top player in the famous drug wars that tore through Miami, US back in the 1970s.
Griselda, who took on the title 'The Godmother of Cocaine' or 'La Madrina', lived a life full to the brim with crime, violence and ruthless escapades.
She was responsible for a string of gory murders and violent revenge attacks while acting as a central figure in Miami's infamous drug wars.
Inspired by real events, this fictional dramatisation dubs Vergara's character as an 'innovator', 'mother', and 'killer' as well as a 'woman of substance'.
However - how did Vergara turn herself into this ruthless criminal?
"We did a lot of tests to find her," Vergara explained at a press conference. "We knew from the beginning that we didn't want me to look exactly like Griselda Blanco, because we didn't have time.
"We were doing a TV show, we didn't have eight hours to do makeup every day. But the most important thing for me was to disappear. For Sofia to disappear, for Gloria Pritchett from Modern Family to disappear."
She added: "I didn’t want people to think 'Oh, that's Gloria with a fake nose'. That was my main worry. And it took us a lot of tests to see different wigs, different noses, different eyebrows."
Vergara added that she wanted the character to 'look human' and not let any prosthetics distract the viewer, continuing: "I wanted to be able to act with all those things that I had on."
The actor revealed her teeth, eyebrows, hairline and nose were all altered with prosthetics.
Alongside this, Vergara's skin tone and complexion were also modified.
"I was trying to change as much as I could without looking like I was in a Halloween costume," she added.
The 51-year-old also wore clothes to 'minimise' certain body features and she even switched up her posture to mimic Griselda's shorter height.
The series was created by Eric Newman with Andrés Baiz directing every episode, with Baiz revealing that Vergara’s physical transformation was one of the toughest aspects of the show.
He told Tudum: "What we decided was that she had to be different than Sofia, but we shouldn’t imitate Griselda Blanco."
Newman agreed that matching Blanco’s hair and makeup should not have come at the expense of Vergara’s performance, saying: "She sat in makeup every day for hours! She was in every scene."
Not only did the star wear five different wigs for the time jumps from the 70s into the 80s but she also donned prosthetic eyebrow covers and false eyebrows glued on top.
Vergara also wore a prosthetic nose and a plate of teeth that were slightly bucked and yellowed out because Griselda smokes throughout the series, too.
"It’s no longer the actor," Newman added. "No one ever saw her on set as Sofia by the time she left her makeup trailer. She was Griselda."
Griselda will be available to stream on Netflix from tomorrow (25 January).