There were multiple reasons Academy Award- and Tony Award-winning actress Catherine Zeta-Jones was determined to star in a movie about Griselda Blanco, the woman who became known as the Cocaine Godmother. The actress spent three years trying to get a project off the ground that looked at the life of the female drug lord who pioneer in the Miami-based cocaine trade. There were starts and stops, but Zeta-Jones never wavered in her passion to tell the story.
"I became interested in her when I saw the film 'Cocaine Cowboys.' They kept talking about La Madrina, but there was very little footage of her. Maybe one or two still pictures," Zeta-Jones says. "What I eventually learned was that while she was morally juxtaposed to what I believe and who I am, there was something about her that let her live so long in this scary and dangerous world."
The three-year quest to play Blanco ended when she was contacted by executives at Lifetime. They told Zeta-Jones they had a script, but it needed a lot of work. As soon as Zeta-Jones read it, she agreed there were some problems, but she was finally so close to playing the role she had coveted so long, that wasn't going to stop her.
The screenplay that David McKenna put together for "Cocaine Godmother" follows Blanco from the age of 17 as she made her way from Columbia to the United States with her first husband Carlos (Carlos Rodriguez) using a fake passport. Life was difficult for Blanco and her three sons, Dixon (Matteo Stefan), Osvaldo (Spencer Borgeson) and Uber (Jose Julian), and that's when Blanco became enticed by the money that could be made working in the drug world.
Blanco had a knack for smuggling masterminding the idea of using of beautiful women, the elderly and children as the mules. She also used false-bottom suitcases and drugs sewn into women's underwear to smuggle cocaine from Colombia. A move to Miami further expanded Griselda's empire, and led to the death of her second husband, Alberto (Juan Pablo Espinosa), giving the rise to her nickname, The Black Widow.
In her lifetime, Griselda's drug distribution network spanned across the United States, and she was suspected of ordering over 200 murders.
The story is interesting enough, but one of the other driving forces behind Zeta-Jones wanting to play the role is she knows she's about to enter a different phase of her career.
"I am now 48 years old and these kinds of parts don't come along every day," Zeta-Jones says of how Hollywood tends to ignore actresses once they get older. "I need to start being seen in a different light. That I can take on roles like this one that is so complicated and has so many levels. People have short memories and I want to show what I am cable of doing."
Playing Blanco was physically and emotionally demanding. It started with having to strip down to the rawest elements of acting to be able to handle how in one scene, Blanco would be a loving mother, and in the next scene commit murder with no qualms. And, she had to do this working under an extremely tight shooting schedule of only four weeks.
Zeta-Jones praises both her director, Guillermo Navarro ("Hannibal"), and the entire crew for the work they did to make the film.
"I am supposed to be excited about the project, but in this case everyone felt the same way. No one just checked in but they were all excited about getting this project made," Zeta-Jones says. "As for Guillermo, I want to work with him on every film."
This is the second project for Zeta-Jones where she's playing a role based on a real person. She portrayed Olivia de Havilland in the FX short-run series "Feud: Bette and Joan." Taking on a role based on a real person is very different for Zeta-Jones than playing a fictional role such as those in "Traffic," "Rock of Ages" and "Chicago."
It means a vast amount of research before ever stepping on a set.
"I did finally find a film of her after she had been in jail and deported back to Columbia," Zeta-Jones says. "She was very soft-spoken and the film showed her going into church where she was very aloof about what she had done and justified everything.
"I never bought it. You can't be involved in what she did for that long without being a full sociopath."
That revelation did create some concerns before filming started. The worry was there would be no way to make the character likable enough that the audience would stay with the story. Zeta-Jones argued there would never be a way to make the role accessible, but the viewer would be compelled to watch to see all of the "cracks in her veneer."
After wanting to play the role for so many years, Zeta-Jones knew she could trust her own acting instincts when it came to making the movie. Now that the project has been completed and she's going to have to move on, Zeta-Jones is a little sad.
"I really hate to let her go," Zeta-Jones says.
The cable film also stars Jenny Pellicer as Caroline, Alejandro Edda as Rudy, Jonah Stark as young Dixon, Jaden Rain as young Osvaldo, Dagan Nish as Michael, Lauren Guci as young Michael, Warren Christie as Jimmy and Darcy Laurie as Pablo Escobar.
