Kate del Castillo talks about ‘El Chapo’
NEW YORK — Kate del Castillo says she just “wants closure” and is hoping to get it from the release of her new three-part docuseries “The Day I Met El Chapo,” now on Netflix.
The documentary tells del Castillo’s version of events surrounding a 2015 meeting with Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, a Mexican drug lord who at the time was hiding from authorities. He’s since been captured and extradited to the U.S. and is awaiting trial.
When del Castillo met with Guzman, she said it was with the intent to make a film about his life. She brought along two film producers and actor Sean Penn, who went on to write an article for Rolling Stone magazine about the encounter.
Since then, del Castillo and Penn have clashed over their accounts of what happened. Del Castillo also suggests that Penn tipped off authorities to the meeting which ultimately led to Guzman’s capture.
Penn, through publicist Mark Fabiani, describes del Castillo’s efforts as “nothing but a cheap National Enquirer- esque tale spun by a delusional person whose hunger for fame is both tawdry and transparent.”
In a recent interview with t he Associated Press, del Castillo talked about the film, Sean Penn and moving forward. “I think we all have good and bad inside of us but we cannot forget who he is. He’s a criminal. ... I saw him and he was a gentleman. He was very nice with me, with us. He loves his family very much so, so that’s part of the interesting thing that I want to show if I ever do the movie, his story life, what happens inside that mind. What is going on in his head? How a little kid from ... Sinaloa becomes this No. 1 drug lord. ... Who helps them? Because he’s not there by himself, right?
“When we got back, my nightmare started because I had to work for Sean literally translating his article, sending it to Senor Guzman, who is a fugitive by then so he’s not answering all the time and Sean is screaming that he has a deadline and El Chapo had approval. ... I never saw the last version of it ... and that’s where ... we had so many fights.
“My whole life has been put on hold for two years. Thank God for ‘Ingobernable,’ the series with Netflix.”