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00:00 (cash register dings)
00:03 I've never been able to take an acting class,
00:06 so I didn't know really the process
00:07 of an actor to prepare for this.
00:09 And I started researching, for example,
00:11 who went from doing comedy to doing a role,
00:15 and I realized Jennifer Aniston.
00:17 It's like she did it.
00:18 - So she helped you?
00:19 - No.
00:20 - Oh.
00:21 - I wish, I wish.
00:22 - That'd be fun.
00:23 - But whoever, I found who worked with Jennifer
00:27 or who has worked before.
00:29 Maybe it's someone that could help me.
00:31 And I found Nancy Banks, who worked with Jennifer.
00:34 She made me understand every line, every scene.
00:37 (upbeat music)
00:39 (people chattering)
00:46 (speaking in foreign language)
00:59 (speaking in foreign language)
01:03 (speaking in foreign language)
01:07 (speaking in foreign language)
01:11 (dramatic music)
01:29 (people cheering)
01:32 - Welcome to the actor's side today.
01:44 Very excited.
01:45 She is a four-time Emmy nominee,
01:47 a four-time Golden Globe nominee.
01:49 Of course, is playing Gloria in "Modern Family."
01:52 So many other things.
01:53 Currently on "America's Got Talent 2."
01:56 I love that show.
01:57 And as Griselda, Griselda Blanco,
02:01 in the Netflix limited series,
02:04 she has won high praise for what I believe
02:07 is your first dramatic role ever, and certainly lead.
02:11 This is Sofia Vergara.
02:12 Thank you for joining us.
02:13 - How are you?
02:14 No, thank you for having me.
02:15 I'm very happy.
02:16 - How exciting though to, I read the reviews,
02:19 you know, before I saw the show, when they came out.
02:22 They were just raves.
02:23 How does that feel?
02:24 - I mean, it feels very good.
02:26 I love it because, you know, it was a lot of work.
02:28 It was like 15 years in the making.
02:30 It was a lot of research.
02:31 It was a lot of no's, and, or we can't do it now,
02:35 or things not happening.
02:36 So when we finally got it and to see that people,
02:39 you know, love it, it means a lot to me.
02:41 It's been very exciting process.
02:44 - Yeah, and taking it on, you know,
02:46 obviously was a huge challenge to convince people
02:50 in this business because you're so known for comedy
02:53 and, you know, 250 episodes of "Modern Family" and things.
02:57 Sometimes they want to type you in this business.
02:59 - Yeah, and it's very understandable.
03:01 Like, I mean, I understand why that would happen.
03:04 I was afraid at the beginning, you know,
03:06 when I went to Netflix with the project, I mean,
03:09 I was like, why do I think that I'm going to convince them
03:13 that Gloria Pritchett can put a rubber nose
03:16 and be able to be Griselda Blanco?
03:18 So it was like, to me, like a big risk that I thought
03:22 this might not happen, but they say yes.
03:25 There was something there that immediately, you know,
03:29 they thought it could be something.
03:31 - This woman was notorious.
03:34 There's no question about it.
03:35 In fact, Pablo Escobar himself, the drug kingpin,
03:40 said, "The only man I ever feared was a woman
03:43 named Griselda," which I thought was a great quote.
03:45 - It was crazy, you know, it was one of the things
03:48 that really, really like pulled me into doing the project
03:51 was that she was a woman that was so successful
03:54 in a man's world.
03:56 I mean, I was very careful to try not to romanticize her
04:00 or make her a hero because at the end of the day,
04:03 she was a monster.
04:04 She did do horrific things in real life.
04:07 And so, but it was interesting to me
04:12 because I grew up in Colombia during that era
04:14 where the narco traffic was part of our lives,
04:17 you know, the '80s and the '90s.
04:19 And we all knew these characters.
04:21 We all knew all these men.
04:22 We all knew who Pablo Escobar was,
04:24 the Rodriguez Oreguela, the Ochoas.
04:27 We grew up, you know, at dinner table, you know,
04:31 in the TV, in the news, in the newspaper.
04:33 It was all about, you know, narco traffic at that time.
04:37 But there was never a name of that woman
04:39 or a woman involved with it.
04:40 There would be like a, you know,
04:42 the girlfriend of a narco guy or the wife,
04:46 but not doing some little something,
04:48 money laundering, but not being, you know,
04:51 the head of a cartel like that, like Griselda Blanco.
04:54 - Just unbelievable.
04:55 And the preparation, the level of research,
04:58 you said 15 years, but that's in all the development
05:01 and making this work.
05:02 And also, I believe you had the showrunner who did Narcos.
05:05 - Yes.
05:06 - Yeah, which is great.
05:07 - So, you know, when I was thinking and planning Griselda
05:10 way before Narcos started and--
05:13 - 'Cause you're an executive producer on it as well.
05:15 - But I didn't know what to do with it.
05:16 Like, you know, I knew what the kind of like,
05:19 what the story should be.
05:20 I knew how she should look.
05:22 I knew, you know, I knew that it was something
05:25 very interesting because it was a woman
05:27 and those kind of stories, people love.
05:31 People love, you know, narco traffic and stories
05:34 and mafia stories.
05:36 - Exactly.
05:37 - So I always thought there's something here
05:38 in this character that I wanna do.
05:40 And then Narcos came on TV.
05:42 I'm like, this is the people I need to take Griselda to
05:45 because they would understand.
05:48 - Exactly.
05:48 - And I met with Eric Newman, the producer,
05:51 and he thought it was brilliant.
05:52 He's like, yeah.
05:53 And I'm like, from the moment he believed
05:55 that Gloria Pritchett could play Griselda Blanco.
05:58 So I was very excited.
05:59 He believed in me from the first meeting.
06:02 - Now I've seen pictures of her.
06:03 Sofia.
06:04 - Yes.
06:05 (laughing)
06:06 Okay.
06:07 - You're one of the most beautiful women in the world.
06:09 It's not just me saying that.
06:11 It's on the cover of People Magazine again right now.
06:15 It's like, so the transformation was,
06:19 how many hours a day did you go through?
06:20 - Well, it was like three hours and something.
06:23 But this was the thing.
06:24 I was never gonna be able to look at Griselda Blanco
06:27 because Griselda looked very different from me.
06:30 She was also for 22 years in jail.
06:33 That transforms you even more.
06:36 But I wasn't afraid of that
06:37 because Griselda Blanco was not, for example,
06:40 Jackie Kennedy.
06:41 You know Jackie Kennedy, the world knows how she looked,
06:44 how she dressed, how she talked, how she moved her hands.
06:48 There was 15 pictures of Griselda Blanco.
06:51 There's no recordings of Griselda Blanco.
06:54 Nobody knows how she even sound.
06:56 So I was not afraid of that.
06:58 I wanted to create this character
07:00 that was not Gloria Pritchett,
07:02 that looked not like Gloria Pritchett, not like me.
07:05 And that didn't have to look like Griselda Blanco
07:07 because we also were doing a TV show
07:09 where you cannot spend seven hours,
07:13 a whole full transformation.
07:14 We were only gonna have three and something hours.
07:17 So it needed to be kind of,
07:19 believe it or not, three and something hours
07:20 is kind of fast for a transformation.
07:23 So it took us a long time to figure out what I needed.
07:26 I needed the wig and the teeth.
07:29 I changed the color of my skin with a weird color makeup
07:33 and the nose was plastic.
07:36 I had plastic from here to here
07:38 'cause I had to cover my thick eyebrows.
07:41 - Yeah, that was a big part of it.
07:43 - And we would put a little eyebrow on top
07:45 because in the '80s, the woman would plug their eyebrows.
07:50 I wanted, my eyes are kind of like cat eye.
07:53 I wanted to, you know, the plastic would fall on here
07:55 and would make me different.
07:57 I kind of created a new way of walking
08:00 and moving that was not Sofia.
08:04 I mean, I would wear like spanks
08:06 'cause I didn't want my butt to like, you know,
08:09 like a Latino woman. - The physicality
08:11 of the performance is very important.
08:13 - It was a lot of things that I had to do for the role,
08:16 but I mean, I think if I knew what it was,
08:19 how hard it was gonna be, I would have never done it.
08:21 - Really? - But it was my first time.
08:23 I had never acted in Spanish, believe it or not.
08:26 - Really? - In perfect English.
08:27 - That's shocking. - Never acted in Spanish,
08:29 never done a drama, never wore really prosthetics
08:33 for anything, so it was hard, but it was worth it.
08:38 I think it was worth it.
08:39 - You have to find some level of empathy
08:41 when you're playing a character,
08:42 particularly somebody like this,
08:44 that you have to somehow like her to play her
08:48 in a weird way.
08:49 I don't know if like her's the word,
08:51 but understand her.
08:52 Did you have to get into this character?
08:54 - Yeah, that was like one of the most important things
08:57 for me to figure out was how do we make this person
09:02 not a monster from the beginning?
09:05 And then you don't wanna say monster for six episodes,
09:08 a person that you don't care about.
09:12 So I wanted to first make her human,
09:14 and I don't know why it kept coming to my mind,
09:18 Tony Soprano, like someone that was brutal,
09:22 but at the end of the day, you fall in love with him,
09:24 like you want him to win, and you invest all this time
09:29 on this person, so I kept thinking of him,
09:32 and I tried to make her as much human.
09:36 And at the end of the day, also when I was preparing
09:39 for learning about her, I always wanted to think
09:42 of someone that had to do at the beginning
09:45 the things that she did because she had to,
09:48 because she needed to survive, because she was a mother,
09:51 because she had been abused, that there were
09:55 good intentions at the beginning,
09:57 and then she turned into this monster.
09:59 So I always thought of her like that.
10:02 - That's what makes the limited series format,
10:04 I think, work so well for this, too,
10:05 'cause you can see that gradual thing
10:08 going all the way to prison.
10:10 Aging was part of it, too, and the whole thing.
10:14 - It was a lot.
10:15 - I mean, so you said this is your first big acting thing
10:19 in that regard, this is called the actor's side,
10:23 so do you have a process, do you have something?
10:25 (laughs)
10:26 - That was my panicking when I said,
10:28 like it took me so long to have Griselda,
10:30 to make it happen, and then when it was about to happen,
10:33 I'm like, now what do I do?
10:35 (laughs)
10:36 I was like, how am I gonna do a character so strong,
10:40 with so many, completely, I've never done anything like that.
10:43 I would just show up on set and pray,
10:45 please, God, make me cry this time.
10:47 (laughs)
10:49 - But you didn't take her home with you.
10:50 - Yeah, I did at the beginning, but without knowing.
10:54 Without knowing, it was like for the first three,
10:56 four weeks, I'm like, why am I,
10:59 like I cannot fall asleep.
11:01 It was like, but then you realize, it's like,
11:03 oh, I'm becoming an actress.
11:05 (laughs)
11:05 It's like, because of course, you spend a whole day
11:07 screaming, killing, doing cocaine, smoking,
11:10 I had to learn how to smoke, I had never even
11:12 put a cigarette in my mouth ever.
11:13 - Oh my God.
11:14 - So I had to learn, and I'm smoking in 96% of the scenes.
11:19 So I'm like, how am I gonna do this?
11:24 So I would go home and I'm like,
11:26 didn't know what was happening to me,
11:27 like exhausted, but couldn't like,
11:31 and then somebody said, just take something to sleep
11:33 because you're like, you know, it's been a crazy day.
11:36 Your body doesn't really know that you haven't been
11:39 crying, killing, kicking, you know, snoring.
11:42 - Swinging a baseball bat at these guys.
11:45 - Your body doesn't know.
11:46 - You look like you've done that, you know.
11:48 (laughs)
11:49 You convinced me, you could pick up a baseball bat
11:51 and go wham.
11:52 (laughs)
11:53 - Just acting.
11:54 - Just, see, you got the acting going.
11:57 Modern Family, such a beloved show.
11:59 Ran forever.
12:00 Is that, you know, everything's getting rebooted.
12:03 Maybe it's a little early to talk about that.
12:04 - It's too early, but I mean, I would do it in,
12:06 I mean, in one second.
12:08 - Yeah.
12:09 - Oh my God, I would love to be again
12:10 part of Modern Family.
12:12 I mean, I would repeat the whole 11 seasons again.
12:15 It was such a gift for anyone to get a job like that.
12:19 You know, 11 years of a steady job
12:22 with the people that you love,
12:23 with a character that was loved by everyone.
12:27 I mean, it was, I got lucky.
12:30 - Well, and you're so good in it too.
12:32 All the Emmy and Golden Globe
12:34 and all those nominations that you consistently got.
12:37 And you were the highest paid female actor on television.
12:40 - Yeah, I mean, I cannot even believe it still
12:43 that I've done all those things.
12:46 - And more.
12:46 - It's been fun, yeah.
12:47 - I love what you do with the voiceover.
12:49 With all the animation, I wrote down some of the
12:52 Happy Feet 2, the emoji movie.
12:54 You played a couch, Dolores the couch.
12:57 - Yeah, I'll do anything.
12:58 - Yeah, Simpsons and Family Guy and Despicable Me.
13:02 - I think it's because I have a very specific voice
13:06 and sometimes when they need something like that,
13:08 you know, I love to do that.
13:10 - You come in and do it.
13:11 - I mean, it's not as fun as being with real actors
13:13 because you're alone on a booth doing the voiceover,
13:16 but it's something that I enjoy.
13:18 - Yeah, Despicable Me 4 is coming out this summer.
13:21 That's another one.
13:22 - I have a part there, yeah, we've been working on it.
13:24 I think, you know, they take time, those movies.
13:27 They even take longer than a movie with real actors
13:30 and it takes a long time.
13:32 - Yeah, it's interesting when we're talking about Griselda,
13:34 she, you know, sort of you followed that trajectory
13:38 from Columbia to Miami, isn't that what you did
13:41 when you hit America?
13:43 - I mean, there were very, a lot of, you know, similarities.
13:46 I mean, it's weird to say with me and her,
13:48 not that I'm gonna kill, you know, three of my husbands.
13:52 I wanted to, but I never do something like what she did.
13:56 She became, you know, brutal,
13:58 but, you know, there were similarities.
14:00 First of all, I'm a woman like her.
14:02 I'm from Columbia, I'm an immigrant.
14:04 I was a single mother.
14:06 I came to a country with my son and to try to make it
14:11 and to not knowing many people, you know,
14:15 not knowing if things were gonna turn out okay.
14:18 Of course, there are a lot of differences,
14:20 but I kind of like understood, you know,
14:24 how she started in all this business.
14:26 - Yeah, and that certainly helped
14:29 your personal journey here too.
14:33 And how did you decide to get into acting
14:35 since you didn't study at all or something?
14:37 I heard you had a kind of classic story.
14:39 A photographer sort of stopped you
14:41 on the beach or something?
14:42 - Well, yeah, that was when I was 17
14:43 and that's how I got into the entertainment world.
14:47 But I was not acting at that point.
14:49 I became a TV host at first in Columbia
14:52 and then in Univision.
14:54 It used to be like the number one Hispanic network
14:59 in the United States in the '90s when I moved to,
15:02 I moved from Columbia to Miami to be in this show.
15:05 So I was this kind of like discover at the beach
15:08 for a Pepsi commercial when I was 17 years old.
15:11 And then, but I was about to like, you know,
15:13 finish high school, to get married.
15:16 I wanted to have kids.
15:17 So for two years, I didn't do anything.
15:19 Then I got divorced and then I started working.
15:21 I said, it's like, okay, I'll do this modeling
15:26 or TV hosting thing that everybody thinks
15:28 I should be doing.
15:30 And I've been since.
15:31 - Look at that fate, you know, sometimes.
15:34 - But the acting was really, really late.
15:36 I got, you know, I started "Morning Family"
15:39 which is really my first big, big acting job
15:42 when I was 37.
15:44 - Wow.
15:44 - So very, very late.
15:45 - That really is, yeah.
15:47 And Griselda is just, if you haven't seen it
15:50 and the whole reason we love to talk
15:53 is to get people to watch.
15:55 There's so much content on television.
15:57 This is Netflix, six episodes.
16:00 When I said she was highly praised for this,
16:02 I'm not kidding.
16:03 You should read these reviews.
16:05 Any actor would kill for them.
16:06 - I mean, I'm still, I still,
16:08 oh, don't say that about me.
16:10 - No, they wouldn't kill for them.
16:13 This is Sofia Vergara.
16:14 Thank you for joining us on the Actors' Live.
16:16 - Thank you so much.
16:17 Thank you.
16:17 (upbeat music)
16:20 (upbeat music)