Inside The Mutiny: The real life nightclub from Griselda you can still visit today

Griselda has had everyone in a chokehold since the show dropped on Netflix. The story of drug lord Griselda Blanco – commonly known as “The Godmother” – starring Sofia Vergara and set in the ’70s and ’80s? Like, of course it’s going to be filled with drama, disco wardrobes and chilling deaths.

And it turns out the nightclub where Griselda did most of her big deals, demands and hustling – The Mutiny – is actually a real location, which you can still visit today. It just looks very different now. So, here’s everything you need to know about Griselda’s most iconic Miami location:

The Mutiny was a private club in the ’70s where rock stars and drug lords would hang out

At the time when Griselda moved to Miami, The Mutiny was a 130-room hotel with a private club. It became the it spot for drug lords and rock stars to hang out and was as wild and chaotic as Netflix’s series show – with a teeny bit of embellishment on the decor.

“We had quite a bit of liberty with The Mutiny because it was a secret, members-only club,” Griselda’s set decorator Kim Leonard  . “There’s not a lot of evidence to back up what it looked like, so we knew what the feel of it was like – the excess of Miami in that time period – but maximised.”

Partying at The Mutiny was just as wild as you’d imagine it to be

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Drugs, disco, dancefloors: Partying at The Mutiny was just as hectic as you’d imagine: “The way you saw celebrities, drug kingpins and CIA-adjacent people and arms dealers throw money around in pornographic terms was unparalleled,” Roben Farzad, author of Hotel Scarface: Where Cocaine Cowboys Partied and Plotted to Control Miami, writes.

“They’d throw tens of thousands of dollars down the drain for a Dom Perignon-filled hot tub. That shows you how much money was sloshing around Miami – how little and everything money meant.”

Griselda Blanco operated at The Mutiny’s nightclub and knew many of the staff

Credit: Youtube/Grunge/Netflix

Just like her eponymous series suggests, Griselda Blanco spent a lot of time at The Mutiny nightclub. But she was predominantly working – with a side of partying: “There’s evidence that she went there to party, she went there to recruit other hitmen, she was hitting on one of the bodyguards,” Farzad told GQ.

“But the Colombians overwhelmingly were not the flashy ones – they were businesslike. The unwritten rule for the Colombian people was to look like they were living the American dream, to not draw attention to [themselves].”

This isn’t the first time a production has used The Mutiny as part of its set

This isn’t the first time The Mutiny has inspired a TV show or movie. It was actually the reference point for Scarface’s fictional club The Babylon because the hotel founder wouldn’t let director Brian de Palma film on site. So, de Palma got himself inside and stayed over night, then created a sound stage inspired by what he’d seen, with a purple mirrored interior and black leather sofas.

The vibes all came crumbling down in the mid ’80s and The Mutiny changed forever

By the ’80s, The Mutiny had changed completely. In 1983 the hotel was sold to new management who wanted it to be an upmarket location without its colourful past coming to disturb the piece. People stopped going, it closed down entirely in 1987 and the building was abandoned and unused for about 10 years.

The Mutiny looks totally different today and is a four star hotel

In 2023, The Mutiny Hotel in Miami is pretty much your standard family hotel. It has four stars, loads of palm trees, a pleasant looking pool and a salmon-pink tower block of rooms. Probably, lovely for a week of annual leave. But definitely not the drug lord hot spot we’re seeing on Griselda.

Related stories recommended by this writer:

∙ Fake teeth, prosthetics and wigs: Inside Sofia Vergara’s transformation into Griselda Blanco

∙ The real Cocaine Godmother’s family are suing Sofia Vergara and Netflix over new show

∙ Omg, the cast of Modern Family all met up for a reunion and the pics are SO cute

Featured image credit via Netflix