Sean Penn Played Me to Get El Chapo Interview, Says Soap Opera Actress

The once obscure Mexican soap opera actress who became famous after having acted as link for the now infamous interview between jailed kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and Hollywood activist Sean Penn has now revealed her side of the story. She claims that Penn duped her into meeting the drug lord under the pretenses of making a movie.

In a recently published interview by The New Yorker, Kate Del Castillo gave a first hand account of her life during the last two years. She described what led to her now famous meeting with the famed El Chapo. Rather than come out as a conniving woman who played the drug lord for an interview, the article depicts Del Castillo as a naive idealist who had established a relation with Guzman, a man she saw as more of a social justice warrior than a ruthless criminal.

As previously reported by Breitbart Texas, Penn tried to cash in on the arrest of El Chapo by Mexican authorities with a story published by Rolling Stone. In the story, rather than ask the capo hard question or provide true insight into the criminal underworld, Penn praised the drug lord while making himself the star of the story.

Various top journalists in Mexico have since denounced Penn’s story as a wasted opportunity. Even Guzman’s wife, Emma Coronel, said in a televised interview that the actor had published things without permission.

This week, famed Mexican actor and father of the starlet Erick Del Castillo, spoke on Mexican radio and claimed that Penn and two Argentinian film producers had “taken advantage” of his daughter, Mexico’s Proceso Magazine reported. The Mexican actor said that Penn and the producers had pressured his daughter to arrange a meeting with El Chapo and that Penn had left her byline out of the Rolling Stone story.

Del Castillo claims that everything started when attorney’s for Guzman approached while the drug lord was in prison and asked her to take charge of a biographical movie about the drug lord’s life. The idea of the movie got even juicier after Guzman was able to escape from a Mexican maximum security prison during the summer of 2015.

In her version of events, Del Castillo describes Hollywood activist Sean Penn as not being interested in her movie project but asking if they could go see him. As time passed, El Chapo gave Del Castillo a Blackberry so they could communicate. As Breitbart Texas published, the messaging between the capo and the starlet took a flirtatious tone, these messages were later leaked by Mexican authorities to various news outlets.

However, according to Del Castillo’s version, the messages were not romantic in nature but more of deep respect and admiration.

Del Castillo further provides other details in the New Yorker interview that contradict Penn’s version of event’s such a military roadblock that Penn says they were waved through. She claims it never happened. Del Castillo said that initially she was never on board for a story but had had been pressured into it assuming that everything was done towards getting the movie project to take off.

Ildefonso Ortiz is an award winning journalist with Breitbart Texas you can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.