Pablo Escobar’s son reveals what it was like to grow up among drug traffickers: the true story behind ‘Dear Killer Nannies’
Juan Pablo Escobar Henao spent years attempting to distance himself from the legacy of his father, the Colombian drug trafficker Pablo Escobar. Over time, he realized that escaping that story was not possible. So he selected a special path: telling the reality. Not to glorify one in all the world’s most infamous criminals, however to reveal what life was actually like inside the Escobar household and to counter the approach television and cinema have usually turned that violence into spectacle.
That was what Escobar Henao informed him to this reporter in 2016when he printed his memoirs, Pablo Escobar, my father. Now, convey that mission to a good bigger viewers with Dear Killer Nannies from Hulu, a brand new sequence primarily based on his expertise rising up surrounded by drug sellers. The central axis of the challenge is the message that it has been attempting to clarify for years: there’s nothing enticing, glamorous or enviable about being a legal.
In reality, tales abound about Pablo Escobar, the creator and chief of the Medellín Cartel, beginning with Narcos from Netflix. What there was not till now was an vital fiction sequence that addressed him from the perspective of the son who beloved him. That is the emotional engine of Dear Killer Nannies: Raised by Sicariosstarring John Leguizamo and impressed by the childhood of Escobar Henao, now referred to as Sebastián Marroquín. This can be why the challenge is so distinguished from the drug trafficking dramas that preceded it.
In a joint interview with Latin Times and ENSTARZ, The creator Sebastián Ortega and the protagonist Janer Villarreal acknowledged that this was exactly the goal. “Having the opportunity to tell it from within the family nucleus, something that had never happened before,” Ortega defined, clarifying that the earlier tales got here from “people outside the family.” What him, he added, was to inform it “from the point of view of a child” who, all through the sequence, turns into a young person and discovers that the father he loves is “one of the worst criminals in the world.”
That baby was not a passive witness to historical past. Juan Pablo Escobar Henao He was born on February 24, 1977. When Pablo Escobar was murdered in Medellín on December 2, 1993, he was 16 years previous. This element is vital as a result of Dear Killer Nannies: Raised by Sicarios It will not be merely the story of an harmless boy too younger to perceive what was taking place round him. It can be the story of a young person sufficiently old to perceive the horror of his father’s world, regardless of nonetheless being emotionally connected to him.
The sequence, premiering April 1, follows “Juampi” as he faces “the burden of his last name” and should resolve whether or not to proceed the household legacy or “start a new life from scratch.”
Juan Pablo himself has been express about why he wished this model to be informed. “I had already read books, watched documentaries and heard many stories about my father, and I felt that this was the time to tell my personal story, the story of Juan Pablo, the story of the child, the little one, the teenager, and the decisions and traumatic moments that I lived,” he mentioned when presenting the sequence. “I felt like I had an opportunity to offer a very different perspective on my father’s story.”
That perspective is predicated on a disturbing element that offers the sequence its title. During the top of Pablo Escobar’s energy, a few of the males answerable for defending Juan Pablo have been hitmen for the Medellín Cartel who, in observe, additionally acted as babysitters. These so-called “babysitters” have been hitmen entrusted with the care of the cartel boss’s solely son, a state of affairs that displays the contradiction of his childhood higher than any crime scene spectacle.
Villarreal, the Colombian actor who performs teenage Juan Pablo, spoke candidly about the weight of embodying that contradiction. “There was always a constant need to approach it responsibly,” he mentioned, calling the challenge “very sensitive.”
Villarreal mentioned that he took on the function with “the guidance of Juan Pablo because he had him very close to understand his story” and from “a place of empathy” as a result of “to understand, you have to empathize.”
That emotional rigor is crucial for the sequence to really feel completely different. Villarreal acknowledged that the challenge pressured him to develop into extra conscious of the scars and ache that this episode precipitated in Colombia, and that it helped him perceive, from one other perspective, the ache that my nation has suffered. In different phrases, it will not be a illustration primarily based on imitation or mythology. It attracts on trauma, reminiscence, and the query of what survives inside a baby lengthy after the taking pictures stops.
Crime does not pay.
After Escobar’s demise, Escobar Henao fled Colombia together with his mom, María Victoria Henao, and his sister Manuela. The household ultimately settled in Buenos Aires with new identities, and Juan Pablo turned Sebastián Marroquín. In Argentina he studied structure and industrial design, and later turned an architect, author and speaker. He additionally had issue discovering work due to his id, and in the years that adopted, he publicly apologized to a few of his father’s victims and tried to redirect the dialog round his final title.
This intensive challenge of reflection is inseparable from Dear Killer Nannies: Raised by Sicarios. Marroquín has been criticizing the glorification of Pablo Escobar in widespread tradition for years. harshly criticized to Narcos for his inaccuracies and subsequently wrote books and a 2025 graphic novel, Escobar: A Criminal Education, which served as inspiration for the new sequence. At the presentation of that e-book, he made his place crystal clear: “I create awareness, Netflix glorifies,” he acknowledged.
Ortega echoed that philosophy in the discuss, however with an inventive formulation. This story, he mentioned, “deserved to be told” in a approach that honored the reality and inspired reflection, leaving “a clear message that violence leads to nothing good,” he added. “Throughout the entire series, you never see a brick of cocaine,” although it’s about “the biggest drug dealer in history,” as a result of “that’s not the focus, the focus is on the child’s point of view.”
That is likely to be the sequence’ boldest inventive choice. He understands that exhibiting Pablo Escobar as a father doesn’t redeem him. On the opposite, it makes it much more disturbing. Family intimacy doesn’t mitigate violence. It reveals the extent to which it invades on a regular basis life, how it transforms childhood and the way a baby can grow up surrounded by privilege, affection, terror and demise at the identical time.
That’s the actual story behind “Dear Killer Nannies: Raised by Sicarios. Not the rise of a boss that the world already knows, but the “personal” training of the son who had to survive him.
