SPOILER ALERT: This publish accommodates spoilers for “Adios, Miami,” the collection finale of “Griselda,” now streaming on Netflix.

When viewers arrive on the finish of Netflix’s new restricted collection “Griselda” — in regards to the life and crimes of feared drug lord Griselda Blanco — they is perhaps stunned to study there’s much more to the story.

The collection doesn’t observe Griselda into her post-prison twilight years. As a substitute, it ends with the so-called Cocaine Godmother of Miami on the worst day of her life –– a scene that examined Sofía Vergara, the girl taking part in her.

“It was very emotional for me,” Vergara tells Selection of filming the sixth and ultimate episode. “However I believe with the assistance of [series director Andrés Baiz], I used to be capable of faucet into the issues that, from the very starting, made me imagine that I might play her.”

Within the finale, Griselda is arrested in California and sentenced to fifteen years in a federal jail for proudly owning and working a Miami cocaine empire that rivaled another operation in North and South America. However that’s by far the least traumatic factor to occur within the ultimate 10 minutes. First, it’s implied that from behind bars Griselda has her estranged third husband Darío (Alberto Guerra) killed so she will be able to reunite their son Michael along with his half-brothers, her different three sons. When all 4 boys go to her in jail, she guarantees that, when she is out, they are going to all be a household once more.

Minimize to seven years later when former Detective June Hawkins (Juliana Aidén Martinez) visits Griselda with information that her three older sons have all been murdered, a methodical and gutting message despatched by her enemies. Solely Michael survives again in his mom’s native Medellín along with his paternal grandmother. Devastated, Griselda goes again to her cell and retreats into the reminiscence of the day she spent on the seashore together with her boys proper earlier than her arrest. That’s when a short-and-sweet epilogue reveals she was ultimately launched from jail, returned to Medellín and was assassinated in 2012 on the age of 69.

The epilogue places an upsetting exclamation level on the top of a life viewers have simply spent six hours watching. And it doesn’t point out that the actual Griselda married for a fourth time, and lived close to Michael and his spouse till her loss of life.

So why did the collection minimize her story quick? Co-creator and govt producer Eric Newman says there was a superb purpose, and all of it goes again to the foundational relationship between Griselda and her sons that opened the collection.

“We needed to present that is somebody who cared about her kids,” he says. “So for us, I believe the actual loss shouldn’t be her loss of life a few years later. It’s the lack of the very factor she was making an attempt to guard. Or that she thought she was making an attempt to guard. You understand, we’re all heroes in our personal story, and he or she’s received an evidence –– not essentially an excuse however an evidence –– for why she did what she did. However that’s the place the loss actually hurts.”

“And we solely had six episodes!” Vergara says.

There may be actually an irony to centering this tackle Griselda’s life round her relationship together with her kids. Defending her sons is a continuing chorus from Griselda, one thing she even repeats within the finale. However Vergara says it turned evident they weren’t her high precedence in the long run.

“There have been choices that she made that you could clearly see weren’t for them,” she says. “It was for her and her ego. She began appearing like the boys she was competing with. I believe all her insecurities as a girl made her suppose she wanted to kill extra, be extra violent and be extra loopy than them to be at their stage. However you see that she is doing all of that for herself.”

The collection was shot nearly completely in sequence, giving Vergara the prospect to indicate Griselda’s evolution from a resourceful mom to a titan of trade. Getting the complete breadth of her journey made it doable for the Emmy-nominated actress to really feel the load of these crushing ultimate moments. However Vergara was additionally in a position to attract from her personal private expertise with the price of the drug commerce.

“I needed to faucet into numerous stuff from my life for these ultimate episodes,” says Vergara, who additionally serves as an govt producer. “I grew up in Columbia throughout that period. My brother was sadly a part of that enterprise, and was killed within the ‘90s. I do know what narco visitors does to your loved ones, what it does to even the one that is a part of that enterprise. I perceive it, I felt it.”

The position, which required intensive prosthetics, took a toll on Vergara by the top of manufacturing. She particularly factors to Episode 5, when Griselda’s deepening habit to crack cocaine spirals uncontrolled and pushes away Darío and her interior circle.

“I actually couldn’t sleep anymore,” Vergara provides. “It was one thing — as a result of I’ve by no means performed something in Spanish or a drama or something with prosthetics, so I used to be type of exhausted and confused and nervous. I believe all of these substances helped me on the finish, as a result of all the things is so emotional for Griselda, you recognize?”

Because the collection closed the guide on its iteration of Griselda, Newman, who additionally served because the showrunner for “Narcos” and “Narcos: Mexico,” says they by no means wished to melt the blow of her actions, nor did they need to dismiss her as a formulaic monster.

“The problem in these reveals is all the time to humanize these individuals who do issues which might be inarguably inhuman,” he says. “Sooner or later, she turns into a terrorist, principally. She kills kids. We don’t draw back from the issues that we all know she did. The trick is to all the time get the viewers on facet as shortly as doable. It helps when you will have a beloved actress like Sofía Vergara, who folks see and instantly know they like her. However you must go a bit deeper.”

Even Vergara discovered herself conflicted about the place she stands with Griselda by the top.

“There are issues about Griselda that I actually admire, which type of scares me,” Vergara says. “She was a robust lady in an period when ladies weren’t equal and there have been solely males within the narco visitors. So for her to be greater, higher and worse than them was an unimaginable achievement for a girl. She might have been one thing else with that. She might have been the president of Columbia or a multinational, not a drug seller. However I do suppose there have been good intentions in her at the start.”