Catherine Zeta-Jones says the 'Cocaine Godmother' is her 'polar opposite'
Catherine Zeta-Jones has played plenty of tough women — murderess Velma Kelly in Chicago, Elena de la Vega in The Mask of Zorro, even feisty Olivia de Havilland in Feud: Bette and Joan. But the Oscar-winning actress told our friends at BUILD Series that she’s never played a woman quite like Griselda Blanco, aka the Cocaine Godmother. “Griselda is literally like the polar opposite of me — morally, what I believe in, what I think is right,” said Zeta-Jones. “But as an actress, I just needed to play her.”
In the new Lifetime movie Cocaine Godmother: The Griselda Blanco Story, Zeta-Jones plays the infamous drug lord, who moved to the U.S. from Colombia at the age of 17 and proceeded to build a cocaine-trafficking empire from Queens, N.Y., and Miami. “This woman was the queen of the kingpins. This woman had Pablo Escobar working for her,” said Zeta-Jones, who worked for over three years to bring Blanco’s story to the screen. “Not only was she a formidable character. … This reminded me, in those four weeks of working, why I signed up to be an actor.”
Watch the full interview here:
Cocaine Godmother: The Griselda Blanco Story premieres Saturday, Jan. 20, at 8 p.m. on Lifetime.
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