Netflix's 'Narcos' tackles drug lord Escobar
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. – Netflix’s Narcos looks at the 1980s drug wars, focusing on the empires created by real-life cocaine kingpins, such as the notorious Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, and the battle to take them down.
The actors and producers talked about the series, which filmed in Colombia and stars Wagner Moura as Escobar, during a panel Tuesday at the Television Critics Association's summer press tour. The 10-episode season premieres on the streaming service on Aug. 28.
Moura says his portrayal is “completely different from the way Benicio del Toro does it” in 2014's Escobar: Paradise Lost. (And probably the turn by Entourage's Vincent Chase in film-within-a-show Medellin). “At the end of the day, it’s the actor’s view of the character. It's the way you see him.”
Pedro Pascal (Game of Thrones), who plays Drug Enforcement Administration agent Javier Pena, says the battle was conducted as a war, one with very gray areas.
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“We’re not going down (there) to bust a drug dealer. We’re going down to fight a war,” he says. “I came to understand that the best way to get the job done was to understand how blurry the lines are.”
Pascal says the epic nature of both the drug war has parallels in Thrones’ larger-than-life battles.
“Game of Thrones would take a lot of inspiration from what went down in Colombia, because it has that size,” he said, adding: “We don’t need dragons. We’ve got cocaine.”
Both the Colombian and American perspectives will be represented, producers said, noting the significance of U.S. drug demand on crime and violence taking place in Colombia.
“It’s important to establish this is a Colombian effort” to fight the drug cartels, executive producer Eric Newman said. “They did the dying. They did the suffering to bring them down.”
All the drug money that was going to Colombia corresponds with all the cocaine going to the U.S., executive producer José Padilha said.
“That story, how cocaine hit America and how it brought violence to America” can only be told from the American perspective, he said.
Based on all the people jailed or killed in connection with the drug war, Padilha concluded, “The drug policy we’ve had for the last 30 years doesn’t work.”