Maybe this shouldn’t be a surprise anymore, but Netflix may have another hit on its hands with Griselda — an upcoming miniseries about Colombian drug kingpin Griselda Blanco. At least, that was my first thought after watching the trailer this morning.
But what was a surprise was the performance of Sofia Vergara, who is starring as Blanco in Griselda. I’ll be honest, I was hesitant to watch the trailer in the first place because I felt that Vergara’s casting for such a serious role could be like a needle scratching across a record. But I couldn’t have been more wrong — she comes off as absolutely perfect for the part in the two-and-a-half minutes of Netflix’s latest trailer.
One character puts it best at around the two-minute mark of the trailer, saying “She [Blanco] didn’t walk like a woman who’s a girlfriend. [She walked] Like a boss.” And in this trailer, there’s no question that Vergara is the boss of Griselda.
This isn’t to say that I don’t think Vergara is a good actor, far from it. But, if you look at her career, particularly the roles she’s excelled at, they’ve been comedic roles. Frankly, it’s been one role specifically, her 11-season stint as Gloria Delgado-Pritchett in Modern Family. That role is hyper-stylized to the point of caricature, including Vergara’s very distinct voice.
In this Griselda trailer, that’s all gone. It’s a completely different side of Vergara, with an unrecognizable voice at times. She shows range too, going from toned down, even demure behavior at times to incredibly confident and with no reservations about the violence she’ll need to rise to the top of Miami’s underworld. At no point does she come off as over the top, even if the trailer itself engages in opulence.
One character puts it best at around the two-minute mark of the trailer, saying “She [Blanco] didn’t walk like a woman who’s a girlfriend. [She walked] Like a boss.” And in this trailer, there’s no question that Vergara is the boss of Griselda.
Griselda: Plot and cast for the Netflix miniseries
Griselda is a crime drama about the former drug kingpin Griselda Blanco, who rose to prominence in the Miami underworld during the 1970s. Blanco has actually been portrayed on the small screen before in the Lifetime movie Cocaine Godmother by Catherine Zeta-Jones, but that movie went about as disastrously as you think it did after reading that brief description.
This time though, Netflix’s big budget is bankrolling Griselda and Doug Miro and Eric Newman — part of the team behind Narcos — are the driving creative forces. Even if the show falls short of the excellent trailer, I’d be truly shocked if it can’t at least outdo its Lifetime movie competition.
Aside from Vergara, we know who makes up the cast of Griselda, though their roles in the show have not been defined by Netflix yet. Here’s who you can expect in Griselda:
- Sofia Vergara as Griselda Blanco, a Colombian woman who rises through the Miami underworld in the 1970s and beyond
- Alberto Guerra as Darío Sepúlveda, Blanco’s third husband and the father of their child Michael Corleone Blanco
- Christian Tappan as Arturo, a trusted ally of Blanco
- Martín Rodríguez as Jorge "Rivi" Ayala-Rivera, a Colombian-American who works as a hitman for Blanco
- Juliana Aidén Martinez as June
- Vanessa Ferlito as Isabel
You can watch Griselda’s entire six-episode run on Netflix starting January 25, 2024.
