Emmy nominee Sofia Vergara’s painful connection to drug lord ‘Griselda’ role

Vergara’s brother Rafael was murdered by a cartel during an attempted kidnapping in 1996

Emmy nominee Sofia Vergara has a painful connection to her role of real-life Colombian drug lord Griselda Blanco. The 52-year-old actress, who earned a nomination in the lead actress in a limited series category for her performance in “Griselda,” will compete against fellow nominees Jodie Foster, Naomi Watts, Brie Larson and Juno Temple at the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday night.

Ahead of the ceremony, Vergara sat down for an interview with Variety in which she opened up about how her older brother, Rafael, had been killed in 1996 by a Colombian cartel during an attempted kidnapping.

“It destroyed my family,” Vergara said.

“It destroyed my mom,” she continued. “It changed our lives completely. We didn’t know what was happening, why he had been killed.”

Vergara has previously spoken out about her brother’s untimely death, which remains unsolved, and took place in her hometown of Barraquilla, Colombia.

“We come from a successful family, and he knew he was a target for kidnapping,” Vergara once said in an interview. “He always had bodyguards. Then one day he went out alone and was shot dead. I was devastated.”

While speaking with Variety, Vergara recalled that she was living in the U.S. when the tragedy occurred. A year earlier, the “America’s Got Talent” judge had relocated from Colombia to Miami where she was raising her son, Manolo, now 32, and working as a host for Univision.

After Rafael’s murder, Vergara convinced her mother, sister and her younger brother Julio to move to Miami and live with her.

“Mother was like a zombie,” she told Parade in 2011. “I wanted to be with them. So I got a big house and we all lived together. I am so grateful to be in this country.”

“It changed our lives completely. We didn’t know what was happening, why he had been killed.”

During her interview with Variety, Vergara admitted that it was a “hard” time for her since she “had to take responsibility for my whole family.”

However, the actress explained that her tragic link to the world of cartel violence later motivated her to portray Blanco. In 2006, Vergara watched “Cocaine Cowboys: The Kings of Miami,” a docuseries about Miami drug kingpins Willy Falcon and Sal Magluta, and was fascinated by Blanco.

Vergara told Variety that she found it difficult to conceive of “this Colombian woman with four kids being one of the most ruthless narco traffic people in history.” She felt drawn to play Blanco, but telling the “Cocaine Godmother’s” story was too dangerous while the drug lord was still alive.

Blanco was killed at the age of 69 in 2012 after she was shot while walking out of a butcher store in Medellin.

In 2015, Vergara watched the premiere episode of the Netflix series “Narcos,” which followed the rise of the infamous Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. She later reached out to “Narcos” showrunner Eric Newman about creating a project that centered on Blanco.

After years in development, “Griselda” was greenlit by Netflix in 2021, with Vergara set to play the lead role and serve as a producer.

While the actress was thrilled that her passion project was finally moving forward, she told Variety that she was worried about taking on a character unlike any she had before.

Vergara became a household name for her role as Gloria Delgado-Pritchett on the ABC sitcom “Modern Family,” with her performance earning her four Emmy nominations and four Golden Globes nods over the series’ run from 2009 to 2020. She has also starred in a number of movies, including the 2011 ensemble romantic comedy “New Year’s Eve,” the 2013 action thriller “Machete Kills” and the 2015 action comedy “Hot Pursuit.”

However, she had not acted in a drama or toplined a show prior to “Griselda.” While speaking with Variety, Vergara said she had never taken an acting class before and decided that she “needed help.”

“I’m like, OK, who is a comedic actress that did good in a drama?” she recalled. “Jennifer Aniston!”

Vergara went on to enlist the help of Aniston’s longtime acting coach, Nancy Banks, but still found it difficult to master the dramatic acting skills she needed to play Blanco.

The actress recalled that she had never performed in a crying scene and didn’t know how to bring herself to tears on camera.

“Nancy said, ‘If you want to cry, you just have to think of something,'” Vergara remembered. “And I did have a lot of horrible things to think about,”

Though she learned how to cry on screen, Vergara said that she continued to be troubled by her negative thoughts after filming wrapped. She told Variety that she became worried after she found it difficult to sleep during the production’s first three weeks of shooting.

“I was anxious. Nancy told me, ‘You’re killing, you’re screaming, crying — everything — during the day. You go home and your body doesn’t know that you weren’t doing those things for real, feeling those things,’” Vergara said.

She continued, “So I had to start taking a little bit of Xanax at night to calm down. I was not prepared for that. I didn’t know. That’s why actors go crazy! How do they do that for years?”