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Netflix\u2019s Griselda<\/em> stars Sofia Vergara<\/strong> as Griselda Blanco, an ambitious and murderous woman who became Miami\u2019s chief drug queenpin in the 1970s and \u201980s. But there\u2019s another woman whose role mirrors Blanco\u2019s in the six-episode series: June Hawkins<\/strong> (Juliana Aide\u0301n Martinez<\/strong>), the homicide detective who helped bring the queenpin down. It took 18 months of work on the show for cocreator Doug Miro<\/strong> to realize just how integral Hawkins was to the eventual capture, arrest, and conviction of Blanco.<\/p>\n In the beginning, \u201c[she] wasn\u2019t at all part of the story,\u201d says Miro, the Narcos<\/em> cocreator who teamed up again with Carlo Bernard,<\/strong> as well as Eric Newman<\/strong> and Ingrid Escajeda,<\/strong> to develop Griselda.<\/em> \u201cI was reading everything there was to read, searching everything online, speaking to the DEA agents I knew. It was a little bit piecemeal, but I pieced together June\u2019s involvement.\u201d<\/p>\n For background, Miro and Newman relied for details on the 2006 documentary Cocaine Cowboys<\/em> and The Godmother<\/em>\u2014a 1990 book by Richard Smitten<\/strong> about Blanco that smacks of misogyny right from the sensationalist cover. (The tagline: \u201cFirst She Mated, Then She Killed.\u201d) Previously, the two people who received the most credit for capturing Blanco and getting her to serve almost 20 years in prison were DEA agent Robert Palombo,<\/strong> and Al Singleton,<\/strong> who was interviewed for both the book and documentary. (Blanco was found guilty of conspiring to manufacture, import and distribute cocaine, and later pleaded guilty to three counts of second-degree murder.) Singleton was a Miami homicide detective; as it turns out, he is also Hawkins\u2019s husband, though their romance didn\u2019t begin until after Blanco was convicted.<\/p>\n Singleton\u2014who makes just a few brief appearances in Griselda,<\/em> played by Carter MacIntyre<\/strong>\u2014and Hawkins knew each other when she was first investigating Blanco, but didn\u2019t reconnect until the late 1980s when they were both interviewed for The Godmother.<\/em> The book mostly focuses on the later part of the hunt for Blanco and, according to Miro, doesn\u2019t capture the most important piece of the story: the early stages of Blanco\u2019s takeover of Miami. It also doesn\u2019t give Hawkins enough credit for her role in nabbing Blanco.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was really difficult to get for us, and it was what I was searching for, what motivated me to dig a little deeper,\u201d says Miro. He built a relationship with Hawkins\u2019s son, who connected Miro and Newman to Hawkins and Singleton in Nashville, where the couple now resides. \u201cIt was amazing, that we\u2019re doing the first show about a [female] narco and it was a female cop who discovered her presence in Miami\u2014who pieced together the size of her organization, who understood and recognized what she was doing on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n Most intriguing to Miro (and Netflix) was the similarity between Blanco and Hawkins\u2019s stories. Both were recently divorced single mothers who relocated to Miami to provide for their children.<\/p>\n \u201cA fireman who [Hawkins] went on a date with told her that the police department was hiring because they needed both women and Spanish speakers,\u201d Miro says. \u201cJune had never thought about being a police officer. She just wanted the health benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n Martinez, who\u2019s originally from Miami and is of Colombian descent, heard all about \u201cla madrina,\u201d the godmother, when she was growing up. But the Yale drama grad had never heard of Hawkins until she got the role in Griselda<\/em>.<\/p>\n Learning about one of the first female homicide detectives in the Miami PD was revelatory. \u201cI was really excited for the rest of my community to know about her because her story needs to be told,\u201d says Martinez, from her family home in Miami.<\/p>\n Martinez and Hawkins had multiple conversations during pre-production and throughout filming. Martinez would often text Hawkins with questions. \u201cI\u2019m so thankful to her for her generosity, that she was willing to share her real-life experiences with me,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Those conversations were revealing. Hawkins started as an intelligence analyst at the Miami-Dade Police Department, at a time when women didn\u2019t work in the field as officers. She was the only intelligence analyst who could speak Spanish and was able to translate for the white male detectives who weren\u2019t able to communicate with witnesses, many of whom were of Cuban and Latin descent.<\/p>\n \u201cHearing about her ascent to homicide detective was fascinating, because you could see it, at every turn, she knew what to do. Instinctually, because she was born in Miami\u2014her family is from Cuba\u2014she understood the Latino culture more than the men, [and] also understood how a mother thinks more than the men did,\u201d the actor says. \u201cShe proved her value, and her point of view was what needed to be heard. That was probably one of the most fascinating things that she talked about, just her maneuvering with men in that field.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n