Sofia Vergara took something of a trip into the unknown when she decided to take the role of Griselda, given fans are used to seeing her portray attractive and glamorous women in all of her productions.
The 51-year-old is playing 'The Cocaine Grandmother' called Griselda Blanco in a new Netflix series and she has been made to look far less attractive than she is in real life.
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She managed to juggle the filming of Griselda with her duties on America's Got Talent and there have been plenty of positive reviews.
Jennifer Aniston's helping hand
But she was nervous about making the switch from comedy to drama after years on Modern Family.
Speaking at a Netflix FYSEE event in Los Angeles, Vergarasaid, "I don't want to say that I have things that are similar with [Griselda], but there [are], because I [am] a woman, Colombian mother, single mother, an immigrant."
"There were many similarities. And so I kind of understood that. But it was so much work to get the whole project going," she explained.
"The last three months before shooting, I was like, 'How am I going to do this? I need to find somebody to help me with the lines?'
"I knew there was no way that I was going to learn how to act in three months.
"So I was like, at least somebody to help me understand every scene because of the English. Sometimes I have a lot of problems.
"And so I thought, 'What actors that I love have been doing comedy and are now doing drama?'
"So I found the person that helped… Jennifer Aniston."
She went on to explain how Aniston dished out the help, with zoom calls being frequent.
"And so I started meeting with her on Zoom because it was the pandemic and all that. And so she would help me like not to like act, but to start feeling everything that I was supposed to feel in every scene," she said.
"And then Andy [Andres Baiz], the director, was the one in charge of teaching me the bad stuff, like to smoke, come to my house, the cocaine, the crack, all of that."
She joked, "I don't know where he learned that [she laughs]. But it came out good. Imagine at 50 to learn to do all those things."
