Editor’s note: The below interview contains some spoilers for Griselda.

The Big Picture

The cast of Griselda consists of many recognizable names from Spanish-language television, who support Sofía Vergara in one of her most impressive performances yet. The actors didn’t want to dive deep into researching the story and instead focused on creating their own characters. Alberto Guerra, Martín Rodríguez, and Christian Tappán explain their characters’ respective relationships with Griselda Blanco and the roles they inhabit for the show.

When you first tune in to Netflix’s newest crime drama miniseries Griselda, one of the first impressions the show makes is through its cast. The bilingual series boasts many big names from the realm of Spanish-language television, all of whom know how to expertly back Sofía Vergara in what’s arguably her biggest and most impressive role to date. Co-creators Eric Newman, Doug Miro, Carlo Bernard, and Ingrid Escajeda, as well as director Andrés Baiz, had the task of distilling the life of this complex and controversial real-life figure into a total of six episodes — no easy feat on its own. While the narrative primarily revolves around Griselda Blanco’s story, and with good reason, it wouldn’t be half as compelling without the men who become a crucial and valued part of her inner circle, some at great personal cost to themselves.

This show has been long in the making, according to Newman, who says that Vergara herself, also a producer on Griselda, came to him with her desire to play the drug queenpin while he was in the midst of working on Narcos Season 2 in 2015, but it would still be several more years before Netflix was confirmed to be attached in production in 2021. Ahead of the show’s premiere, Collider had the opportunity to speak with several people who were involved in making Griselda, including Alberto Guerra, who plays Griselda’s third husband Dario, Martín Rodríguez, who plays Griselda’s loyal hitman Rivi, and Christian Tappán, who plays Griselda’s accountant and longtime advisor Arturo. Over the course of the interview, which you can read below, the trio explains why they didn’t want to dive too deep into researching this story ahead of time,

Griselda Fleeing from Medellín to Miami, Griselda Blanco creates one of the most ruthless cartels in history. Release Date January 25, 2024 Creator Eric Newman, Carlo Bernard, Ingrid Escajeda, Doug Miro Cast Sofia Vergara , Alberto Guerra , Juliana Aidén Martinez , Martin Rodriguez , Jose Velazquez , Orlando Pineda Main Genre Crime Seasons 1 Streaming Service(s) Netflix

COLLIDER: How familiar were you with this story before joining the show? What was your level of knowledge of Griselda and her real life?

ALBERTO GUERRA: Not much, really. I knew a little bit about Griselda’s history, and I knew a little bit about what she had done privately and business-wise. But we didn’t want to stick to the historic matters of the story. We wanted to really make it out of the script. We wanted to create our own characters, the whole idea. These are real-life people, but they’re not public figures, so you don’t get to know them. No one does. You don’t know what their feeling was, you don’t know what they were thinking at the time. You know the facts. You know what they did, you know when they did it, and so we didn’t want to lose that liberty of just being able to create out of nowhere.

MARTÍN RODRÍGUEZ: In my case, fortunately, Rivi is a real person, and he had made a documentary from prison. I realized how this period was because he tells in the documentary about some of the things that they did. But we didn’t try to resemble the real person behind the character in formal terms. We tried to connect more with the facts that happened in the period, and how the energy from the period was.

Alberto Guerra Discusses the Biggest Turning Point for Dario and Griselda
Image via Netflix

Alberto, Dario is introduced in the show in a very memorable way. He’s basically working for someone who wants to have Griselda killed, and then eventually ends up falling in love with her, marrying her, having a family with her. Where do you think he realizes that his fate is going to be entwined with this woman?

GUERRA: It’s pretty obvious in Episode 5 at the beginning. You notice that he knows he’s not going to get her out of the world, that he’s not going to get her to do what he wants to do, which is take his family and the money that they have and just run away and start from scratch. He realizes that she’s not the person that he fell in love with anymore. She’s this power-drunk person, and she’s totally lost it.

We didn’t want to make such a big, melodramatic thing out of it, but we wanted to give you this realistic sense of what happens when you realize that the person in front of you doesn’t love you anymore. But the thing is, that person can have you killed in five seconds, so it’s not a normal situation. You can’t just make a decision like that to live. So, it was really complex. People tend to think that it’s really easy to play these characters because they’re so linear, but they’re not. They’re really complex because they feel like every other human being, but their lives are not the same as ours. So, how do they think within that world? That’s the complexity of it.

Martín Rodríguez on the “Eccentricity” of Rivi’s Character
Image via Netflix

Speaking of complex characters, Martín, Rivi develops his own connection with Griselda. He’s very seductive, he’s very cunning. Sometimes you don’t know if his loyalty is to her or to himself above everything. What did you enjoy about getting to inhabit such a complex character for this show?

RODRÍGUEZ: We knew that the character demanded a certain eccentricity and ambiguous behavior because I understand that it is a complete personality, that guy. I tried to connect my work, my personal work, with a guy that had a deep pain. So, from there, he tried to reconnect with a mystic way, and he developed a relationship with her in a very atypical way because he wanted to show her the mystic way and the mystic world, and was more connected with an impossible love.

Christian Tappán Didn’t Want to Play a Macho Man in ‘Griselda’
Image via Netflix

Christian, Arturo becomes one of Griselda’s closest confidants. Most importantly, he’s one of the few men in her life that she can really trust. Did you have any conversations with Sofía about that relationship and the depth that you wanted to bring on-screen?

CHRISTIAN TAPPAN: I did speak with Andy, the director, and I wanted to not be part of a rough character. No testosterone! [Laughs] I would give advice, whether good or bad, but I would give advice to be taken by them as they wished, as a conciliary.

Griselda is currently available to stream on Netflix.

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