Actor Sofía Vergara is being sued over an upcoming Netflix series about the late Colombian drug lord Griselda Blanco, known as the “Cocaine Godmother” for her reign over the 1980s drug trade in Miami, Florida.
Blanco’s adult children accused both Vergara and Netflix of using the family’s image and likeness without permission for the show “Griselda,” according to Friday reports by TMZ and Entertainment Tonight.
The news comes shortly before the series’ scheduled premiere Thursday.
In the lawsuit, Blanco’s son reportedly said that he’d been shopping around his and his mother’s life stories since 2009 in the hopes of developing them into a production. Netflix expressed interest during that time, he said.
The son, who has previously shared tales about his mother in multiple public interviews, alleged that the streamer said it wouldn’t utilize any of his anecdotes. But the upcoming series heavily relies on them anyway, he claimed, adding that he did not receive any compensation.
According to the lawsuit, the Blanco children are seeking a court injunction to prevent the show’s release.
Representatives for Netflix and Vergara did not immediately reply to HuffPost’s requests for comment.
Vergara, who announced in July that she and fellow actor Joe Manganiello were divorcing, recently sat down with ET to discuss her portrayal of Blanco, describing her as “a complex person.”
“There are so many nuances to explore in terms of who she was as a drug lord and, of course, as a woman, as a mother,” said Vergara, who herself is Colombian. “She was someone who did whatever it took to protect her family.”
She continued, “I really wanted to explore that from the point of view of, you know, of her being one of the only women in history to have gone as far as she did.”
Blanco was reportedly one of the first Colombian women to traffic cocaine into the U.S. She spent years behind bars for drug trafficking and three murders. But some suspected that she was linked to dozens more killings, if not hundreds.
Blanco was also a focus of 2006’s cult-classic documentary “Cocaine Cowboys.” She was shot dead in 2012.
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