Sofía Vergara stars as a notorious Columbian drug lord in Netflix limited series Griselda and she knows first-hand how the narcotics trade can ruin the lives of ordinary people. “I lived through that era,” says the native Colombian, for whom Pablo Escobar and the Orejuela brothers were household names. “Everybody at that time—good families, families with money—were part of the business at some point. Even, unfortunately, my brother.”

Vergara’s brother was killed by a drug cartel in the 1990s, when he was just 28 years old. “There are things that happen in life that push you in the wrong direction,” she says. “My brother had nothing to do really in this business, and for some reason he ended up there. He was very charismatic, very generous, very handsome. You would’ve never thought. But people are not just one thing. They sometimes get dragged into things because of necessity, because of things that happen in life, and you make the wrong decisions. That doesn’t make you a horrific person.”

A ruthless drug lord containing multitudes was what intrigued Vergara about Griselda Blanco, the titular lead in Griselda, on which Vergara also serves as executive producer. Known as the Cocaine Godmother, Blanco was also a mother of four who came to America for a better, if morally questionable, life. But when she first came across Blanco, in the documentary Cocaine Cowboys, Vergara knew nothing about her. “I’m like, ‘Who is this woman?’ When I started investigating, I realized that most of her stuff was done in the United States,” recalls Vergara. When she dove deep into the Colombian’s rise as a drug lord, there was something relatable about the story. “I’m like, ‘I know this character.’ When I saw Griselda—not that I killed husbands or anything like that—I knew who she was. I have many similarities in a way; I’m an immigrant, a mother, a strong person,” says Vergara. “But not everybody does horrific things.”

What worried Vergara about making Blanco the lead character was that the audience would immediately condemn her, which ironically was how she first felt about the character of Gloria Pritchett in her long-running hit show Modern Family. “I was the Latin wife, 26 years younger than this wealthy American guy. So, I always thought, ‘They’re going to hate me because she’s a gold digger. What else is this woman coming from nowhere?’” says Vergara. “But I realized, from the first episode, that everybody believed that Gloria and Jay were in love and that she loved him.” When she, again, feared that the audience wouldn’t take to six hours of the cold-blooded Blanco, director Andrés Baiz assured her that, as with Gloria, the audience would see Vergara’s personality shine through and feel for the character. “And it worked,” she says.

Having taken the better part of 15 years to get Griselda into production, Vergara says her obsession to get the series made distracted her from the thought of playing the biggest role of her life. In some ways, she thought someone would eventually dissuade her. When she brought the project to Eric Newman, Vergara was sure the Narcos producer would tell her, “Are you f*cking crazy? How is Gloria Pritchett going to play this character?” “He didn’t tell me that. He’s like, ‘Yes, it’s going to be amazing,’” she recalls. “And Netflix was like, ‘Yes, Gloria Pritchett can do this.’ So, I was like, ‘OK, I can do this.’”

Right before production started, the magnitude of it hit her. “I was like, ‘What the f*ck am I doing? How am I supposed to play this?’” she says. “‘What did I do?’” Vergara credits acting coach Nancy Banks, who also helped Jennifer Aniston transition into drama, for building her confidence. “In two months, of course, you don’t learn how to act, but she helps you break down every scene, every phrase, everything of the scripts. That’s what I did,” she says. “By the time that I had to start filming, I already knew all the lines in the six scripts.”

Her meticulous preparation came in handy when, during Covid, schedules would rapidly shift. “I knew everything,” she says. “Nancy really helped me make sense of the thing as a whole, because, even though you don’t film in order, you do have to create a crescendo. Like, ‘You cannot do this scene, in this episode, like this, because you want to leave something for the last episode.’ She made me understand, in a more technical way, the process of actors.”

What no one could prepare Vergara for was how her body would respond to the violent and emotional material. “My only experience was with Modern Family, and I would go to my house super happy, because it was a pleasure to read those lines. Here, the first two weeks, I didn’t understand what was happening to me,” she says. “Your body doesn’t understand that during the day you’re not crying, or getting scared, or hiding, or giving the order of killing someone, or they’re telling you that they just killed someone that you love. While you’re in the scene, you’re feeling all that sh*t. So, I would go home, and I was like, ‘I can’t fall asleep.’ I thought, ‘I’m either going to die or lose my mind.’ And then somebody told me, ‘Just bite on a little bit of Xanax and see what happens.’ And it was amazing, because I would calm down and fall asleep.”

The thought of the months she embodied Blanco still gives Vergara the chills. “I did get a little bit traumatized,” she says. “I don’t think I can do it again. It was awful, the prosthetics for 16, 17 hours a day, the wig, the nose, the plastic on top of the eyes, the fake teeth… I had no life for seven months.” On the other hand, proving to herself what she is capable of has been life-changing. “It gave me the confidence that I can do something that is not comedy. It’s great that I know that I could do a role like that,” she says. “It makes me think, I can have a longer career now.” And Vergara is not the only one seeing the future potential from this performance. “A lot of people in the business watched the show, and everybody was really, really surprised, because they had never seen me do anything like that,” she says. “I mean, I was surprised.”

The biggest revelation for Vergara has been the universally warm reception of her Griselda Blanco, even if that was her intent all along. “I wanted to play her so that the people would kind of root for her, even though you know you shouldn’t,” she says. “Griselda did things in that era that, for a woman that looked like her, was unheard of. She was running this cartel that had the most vicious, horrible men in the world, and they were all afraid of her. She was able to get to a level that not even many men get. It was kind of impressive.” To the point that, from time to time, Vergara still has to check herself. “Like, ‘Sofía, calm down. You cannot be wowed by what this woman did,’” she says. “She was a monster.”