Sofía Vergara tells stunned Jimmy Fallon she learned ‘how to do cocaine’ on set of new series

Sofía Vergara caused a stir after a hilarious exchange on The Tonight Show which saw her confess she was 'taught how to do cocaine'.

Now, before we get going this may shatter some of the magic of showbiz.

I'm sorry to say, but when the stars swig whisky from the bottle, it's probably just cold tea.

And that big pile of cocaine that Al Pacino stuck his face in in Scarface wasn't actually cocaine. I know, shocking.

Now, Vergara had been appearing on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon to promote the Netflix miniseries Griselda, where she plays the title role.

Griselda follows the story of Griselda Blanco, a Colombian drug lord known as 'the Cocaine Godmother' and 'the Black Widow'.

Blanco ran a huge drug operation after moving from Medellín in Colombia to the United States, first operating in New York before moving to Miami.

From there her drug empire grew to become enormous, and she became a central figure in the Miami Drug Wars, also called the 'Cocaine Cowboy Wars', in the 1970s and 80s.

Anyway, Vergara found herself in a tight spot when she recounted how director André Baiz had become her 'anchor' on the set of the new Netflix drama centering on Blanco.

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She said: “I didn’t know anything. He taught me how to smoke. He taught me how to do cocaine. He taught me a lot.”

The audience erupted into laughter as Jimmy Fallon interjected, saying 'alright, hold on, hold on'.

But the blissfully unaware actor continued, saying: “It was amazing because I was 51 years old and I didn’t even know how to, you know, how to light a cigarette.

"I’ve never done cocaine. So it’s like, it was amazing. It was like, a great experience.”

As the words left her mouth, the penny dropped and she rushed to make it clear that she hadn't actually been doing cocaine.

“The cocaine that I did was fake. But I had to pretend. The cigarettes are also fake. Everything was, it’s fake," she said, adding: "But the acting was real.”

'The cocaine was fake, but the acting was real' sounds like a great tagline, or maybe the title of a memoir.

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The new six-part Netflix drama will take a look at Blanco's life and criminal career, which some believe saw her involved in more than 200 murders.

Spoiler alert, Blanco was eventually arrested after moving to California.

After being convicted in 1985, she was sentenced to 15 years in prison. After prosecutors' efforts to seek further charges, she pleaded guilty to further charges in 1998 in exchange for a reduced sentence.

She was released from jail in 2004 and deported to Colombia.

In 2012 the drug lord was shot dead in Medellín by a gunman on a motorcycle as she was leaving a butcher's shop.

Griselda is set to premiere on Netflix on January 26.