In her latest series, Sofia Vergara transforms into Griselda Blanco, a notorious Colombian drug lord. Makeup artists played a big role in making her look like her Griselda character, and she had to spend hours getting made over before filming. So when Kelly Clarkson suggested “they only changed [her] nose or something” during their Jan. 24 interview on her talk show, Vergara did not stand for it.
A Passionate Shutdown
Vergara looked truly flabbergasted after Clarkson’s comment about her Griselda transformation. “What?!” she asked, before adding, “Are you crazy?” while Clarkson tried to explain her thinking. She jumped in again after Kelly said the change looked “slight,” clarifying, “No, Kelly, it was hours.”
Although Vergara seemed amused by the whole situation, she definitely wasn’t willing to let Clarkson minimize how much went into altering her appearance. Telling the talk show host to “shut up,” she gave a rundown: “It was a wig! It was a lot! They did a lot to me. It was teeth, it was wig, it was nose, it was plastic from here to here.”
After Vergara got that out there, Clarkson was able to better clarify her perspective. She said she thought the transformation was “seamless” and they made her look like “a different actress.” That reassured Vergara. “I love that you thought that it was just a little thing, because that means it looks natural,” she said.
Becoming Griselda
Considering that Vergara spent 11 years playing Gloria on the popular sitcom Modern Family, it was important to her to be seen differently. “I had an incredible hair and makeup design team that did an amazing job creating this character who was in the world of Miami in the ’70s and ’80s,” she said in press notes. “Getting the look correct was very important to me because I needed to disappear. I wanted no one to think of me or my last role as Gloria Pritchett.”
The hair and makeup team didn’t try to make her look exactly like Blanco, according to director Andrés Baiz, one of Vergara’s fellow executive producers. “She wanted to feel like a different person, but not to the point in which the prosthetics or makeup took over her performance,” he said. “It had to be subtle.”
Her makeup artist, Todd McIntosh, gave more details about what went into her transformation and he listed some of the key components. Among them were prosthetic eyebrow covers with false eyebrows on top, a prosthetic nose, and a plate of teeth. She’d spend three hours getting it done before filming, executive producer Eric Newman told The Hollywood Reporter.
It’s no wonder Vergara wanted to set the record straight with Clarkson. Watch their full exchange below.
Griselda is streaming on Netflix.
