Besides death and taxes, there is one more certainty in this life: crime. As long as men and women have walked on two legs and pushed air through their lungs to communicate with each other, they’ve been shady. It is, therefore, no surprise that the crime genre on TV does so well. It’s why shows like Narcos are so popular and it’s why a new drug crime show called Griselda is getting so much attention. This begs the question, are the two shows linked?
Narcos lasted for 3 seasons, and told the story of the Colombian drug trade and authorities’ endeavors to take it down. The first two seasons covered the Pablo Escobar saga, and gave us years of memes to enjoy. The third season featured America’s Daddy right before he hit ultimate mainstream acclaim with The Last of Us: Pedro Pascal.
After that, we got Narcos: Mexico, which transported us into the seedy drug world of the 1980s. That one was set in the shared Narcos world, and brought back some characters from previous seasons. Finally, we got the Netflix mobile game Narcos: Cartel Wars Unlimited, released this month for both Android and iOS operating systems. It’s only available to Netflix subscribers, and it lets you run your own cartel as an Escobar-like kingpin.
This brings us to Griselda, who’s played — with prosthetics — by Modern Family actress Sofia Vergara. Is it a sequel? Prequel? Distant cousin? Believe it or not, the latter is the most accurate description. Before we get into that, let’s update everyone on exactly what Griselda is all about.
Who was Griselda?
She had many nicknames: La Jefa (The Boss); The Black Widow; Cocaine Godmother; and, of course, La Madrina (The Godmother). Her reputation was just as sharp, too. She was incredibly dangerous, and thought to be responsible for hundreds of murders, including close confidants and her ex-husbands.
Her God-given name was Griselda Blanco, and she was born in 1943 to indelible poverty in Cartagena, Colombia. Raised by an alcoholic mother, she seemed to just fit into a life a crime the same way Michael Jordan fit a basketball player.
Her first reported brush with the dark side started early. She was just an 11-year-old when she reportedly kidnapped a well-to-do boy in town and demanded a ransom. The parents didn’t comply with the request and she killed the boy. This is the legend of Griselda, and it’s only the beginning.
At 12, a pimp named Carlos Trujillo started Griselda doing sex work. She moved to New York City at 13, and by 21 she was married to Trujillo, and had three of his children. They would all eventually die from their relationship to the drug trade.
Trujillo was also shot — you guessed it — by Griselda. She then married a man named Alberto Bravo, and they began smuggling cocaine to the United States. Say what you will about Griselda, she was whip smart, and unafraid of consequences, making her extremely dangerous.
Bravo owned a clothing company, and Griselda helped to manufacture lingerie that had special pockets to hide drugs in. This scheme earned the couple millions, but Griselda accused Blanco of stealing money, and they had a shootout.
She took a slug in the stomach from an uzi, but survived. Bravo did not. She then married Dario Sepulveda and moved to Miami, running her business by herself. She reportedly earned $1.5 billion during her tenure as a drug lord.
Part of Griselda’s success owed to her opponents’ tendency to underestimate her. Many fellow drug dealers assumed she was stupid, and while they planned to steal from her or lessen her influence, she had them killed. She also developed a healthy addiction to a cocaine paste called basuco, and kept a Learjet waiting at all times in case she had to flee.
She had her own army of foot soldiers, and they were extremely brutal and murderous. It’s said she basically invented the “assassin on a motorcycle” killing, and she would have her rivals killed at any time of the day. One came off a plane in Miami and was stabbed with a bayonet immediately.
She enjoyed being at war, and she had wild and extravagant orgies at her house. She would make people have sex at gunpoint, and she had eight adult dancers murdered because she thought they slept with her husband. She also had a German shepherd guard dog named Hitler.
During the peak of her reign, the morgue in Miami had to borrow a refrigerated van from a local Burger King to keep all the bodies refrigerated. In 1983, she had Sepulveda killed after he absconded with her son.
She was finally captured in 1985, and sentenced to 15 years. While in prison, she was charged with three counts of murder, a mere fraction of what she was thought to have commited. In 1998 she was sentenced to 20 more years, but concurrently, and she was released in 2004.
She moved back to Colombia much diminished, but she still had enemies. In 2012, she was gunned down by an assassin on a motorcycle.
Is Griselda linked to Narcos?
Now to the question. Is Griselda related to Narcos in any way?
Let’s take it straight from the horse’s mouth, aka writer Eric Newman, showrunner and writer for Narcos, as well as The Watcher and Bright. When asked about the similarity to Narcos, and whether he considered making it a part of that franchise, he had a pretty clear answer.
Basically, he said the show “can’t help but be a bit of a cousin” to Narcos, and it has ” a lot of the elements and felt like Narcos” but ultimately he wanted it to be “Sofia’s party.”
“There’s always someone in the equation — and I’ve been the person and I’ve also facilitated for the person — and here it was [Sofia] who was like, ‘I want to do this. I don’t know that I can do this but I want to try.’ And I knew she could.”
It’s admittedly a big departure from Vergara’s most famous role in the hit sitcom Modern Family. He said he realized she was capable to do the role after an accidental 23 hour day where she blew up at him for the scheduling.
While Pablo Escobar does not appear in the show, it starts with a quote from him:
“The only man I was ever afraid of was a woman named Griselda Blanco.”
There are also a few actors in common on the shows. Alberto Ammann, who plays Pacho Herrera in Narcos: Mexico, plays Griselda’s husband, Alberto. Actor Alberto Guerra, who plays a drug dealer in Narcos: Mexico, portrays a hitman named Dario.
Jose Zuniga, who plays a Miami cartel don in Griselda, played General Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo in Narcos: Mexico. Actor Ernesto Alterio plays Alberto’s brother in Griselda, and he portrayed the Director-General of the Mexican Direccion Federal de Seguridad in Narcos.
Griselda is currently streaming on Netflix.
