Sofia Vergara quickly clapped back after an interviewer seemingly made fun of her accent.
The Colombian actress, 51, appeared on the Tuesday, January 9, episode of El Hormiguero, where she spoke about her experience on the ABC sitcom Modern Family. The conversation prompted host Pablo Motos to ask, “How do you say ‘Modern Family’?”
Vergara appeared confused at first, but then fired back, “I say it wrong? Oh, because you speak better English than me? Ah.”
She quipped, “How many Emmy nominations do you have in the United States? How many times did they nominate you at the Golden Globes?”
Vergara is a four-time Emmy nominee and four-time Golden Globe nominee for her role as the boisterous Gloria Delgado-Pritchett on Modern Family, which ran for 11 seasons from 2009 to 2020. Her character, who is also Columbian, frequently mispronounced English words and phrases.
Before the series came to an end, Vergara faced criticism for what some viewers interpreted as a stereotypical portrayal of a Latina woman. “What’s wrong with being a stereotype?” the actress told Hola! USA in 2017 when asked for her perspective. “Gloria’s character is inspired by my mom and my aunt. They are both Latin women who grew up in Colombia, like me. They love color, prints and shoes.”
She continued, “It upsets me when Latinos complain about Gloria. I am grateful for the opportunity because the gringos have let me in with this strong accent I have. Eight years ago nobody had an accent like this on television.”
Vergara’s latest project is playing real-life Columbian drug lord Griselda Blanco in the Netflix series Griselda. Known as The Cocaine Godmother, Blanco was a prominent figure in the drug trade in Miami beginning in the 1970s. She was arrested and charged with conspiring to manufacture, import and distribute cocaine in 1985 and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Blanco was released in 2004 and later assassinated in 2012 at age 69.
In an interview with Entertainment Tonight published on Wednesday, January 10, Vergara described Blanco 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,” she said of the series, which hits Netflix on January 25. “She was someone who did whatever it took to protect her family.”
She added, “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.”
