While the real cartel queenpin Griselda Blanco’s reign of violence besieged ’70s and ’80s Miami, there was only one casualty on set of the new drama created by the team behind Narcos: Griselda’s nose.
Griselda director and co-creator Andrés Baiz and executive producer and star Sofía Vergara developed a special bond after shooting for 100 days together. “[For] six months, I was in every scene and he was in every scene,” Vergara tells Tudum in the video above. “I got super lucky that I was able to come to a show where I was new to everything: acting in Spanish, doing dramatic acting. To be able to find Andi and the group of people he put together, it was a dream come true.”
After working so closely together, Vergara had an idea to celebrate Baiz on the last day of shooting. “She gave me the honor — this might sound gross — of pulling [off] her nose with my teeth, her fake prosthetic nose,” says Baiz in the video. “So I grabbed her nose and I pulled [it off].”
Since Vergara had had to remove the prosthetic nose at the end of every day of shooting, giving Baiz the honor when they wrapped felt fitting. “Andi, from the beginning, he had a thing for Griselda,” says Vergara. “He loved Griselda. I would come out on set and he was like, ‘She looks amazing.’ I’m like, ‘What are you talking about? You’re crazy.’ ”
The nose incident was just one of the many stories and Easter eggs Vergara and Baiz share in the video above. Read on to discover more behind-the-scene moments from the set of Griselda.
The Griselda title card appears whenever we see Blanco in close-up for the first time in each episode. “It’s a unifying formal element of the whole show,” says Baiz. “Every time I closed my eyes and I thought about Griselda, I saw a close-up. I saw Sofía Vergara in Griselda. This is a character-driven show. It’s a very intimate piece.” When it comes to his favorite title cards, a couple stand out to Baiz. “In the sixth episode, it’s really funny, Griselda is smoking crack and she pulls her head back.” Vergara agrees: “I love that one!”
“I also love, in Episode 4, she’s in a car wash,” Baiz says. “We designed an amazing sequence.” Vergara adds: “I think the car wash was my favorite one, because it was so different to me. And I don’t think I had been inside a car wash in 40 years. So it was very exciting for me, and it felt really different. And when I saw it, what [Baiz] did, it was like, ‘Wow, this one is the best.’ ”
Baiz says the series’ writers wrote in a habit for Griselda. “The original tic was that Blanco would tap her nails on her leg,” Baiz says. “But it was Sofía [who] said, ‘I don’t want to do that. I want to do something more authentic, more real, that feels more appropriate for the character.’ "
Vergara continues: “In case you didn’t notice, every time that Griselda feels nervous or uneasy, she starts playing with one of her rings on her right hand. It means that her head is spinning.” The actor came up with the ring spin herself. “It’s such a character-driven show, it’s so intimate. Those little moments, those little details really make this show special,” Baiz says.
Even more special: The ruby ring Blanco spins is actually from Vergara’s own collection.
You’ll notice Griselda has a cigarette in her mouth in most scenes. “It was a recurring theme,” says Baiz. “The show takes place in the ’70s and ’80s in Miami. It was different in those days, and a lot of people smoked. So it was an essential part of Griselda’s character.”
But for Vergara, it wasn’t quite so straightforward. “For me it was horrifying because I had never touched a cigarette in my life and I was already 50 years old [during filming], so I had to start from scratch,” she says. “From knowing how to even hold it, turn it on, get it out of the box. Andi was the one who taught me. He came to my house. He taught me how to smoke. He taught me how to do the [fake] cocaine. So it was a lot of fun that we had together in my house preparing for this show.”
Luckily, the cigarettes used in filming didn’t contain real tobacco, but instead were special cigarettes “made for the magic of movies.” Nonetheless, Vergara still had to smoke like a chimney as Griselda. “It’s so funny because I think I smoked for six months straight nonstop,” she says. “It was like 700 times a day. And the moment we finished filming, that was it. I haven’t had a cigarette [since].”
Fun fact: Paulina Dávila, who plays Isabel in Griselda, and Vergara are cousins in real life.
“It was amazing because I had not seen Paulina in 20 years,” Vergara says. “So the last time I saw her, she was 10. And it was heartwarming for me. But it was never a thing about, ‘Oh, let’s cast her because it’s Sofía’s cousin.’ ” Indeed, Baiz didn’t know that Dávila and Vergara were related. “I had never worked with Paulina before, but I was a friend of Paulina’s,” he says. “I thought, ‘Isa is made for her,’ and she plays an amazing character. She brings so much energy, so much life to the show. It was really great working with her.”
When Vergara and Dávila were shooting a scene together, they connected in an unexpected way. “Blood calls, you know?” says Vergara.
In Episode 4, Blanco takes a bath in her rented Palm Beach estate, which features a huge painting of Salome by German artist Franz von Stuck. “Salome is dancing with joy as the head of John the Baptist is brought to her by her servant,” Vergara says. “In this episode, Griselda wants to behead and kill the men who double-crossed her in the previous episodes.”
Baiz adds that the painting’s placement in the series was intentional. “Women have always been portrayed in art in erotic poses, in submissive stances; they’re always smiling,” he says. “We researched who in art history were empowered, strong women who defeated or went against men in a very specific way.”
In Episode 4, Griselda and her family have a movie night while staying in the Palm Beach estate. “They are watching the final scene in The Godfather, which they know by heart. Griselda excuses herself and goes to the bathroom to throw up. She’s secretly pregnant with Darío’s child,” Baiz explains. (Griselda’s third husband, Darío Sepulveda, is played by Alberto Guerra in the series.) “Her son’s name, believe it or not, is Michael Corleone Blanco. “It’s no coincidence [people] called Griselda Blanco La Madrina, which means ‘The Godmother.’ ”
Griselda Blanco had even more nicknames. “There’s one more,” Baiz says. “La Compasiva, the Compassionate. And it comes actually from a scene in that same episode. She’s going to behead someone with a sword, one of her enemies, and she actually decides to kill him with a gun, [which is] faster.”
