The actor and producer Kate del Castillo has said she plans to go ahead with a proposed biopic about the drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán despite having been warned against it by the Mexican government.
Del Castillo had previously told reporters she received a message in January on behalf of Mexico’s interior secretary, Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, telling her to halt plans for a film. In a new interview with CNN en Espanol she described the message as “kind of intimidating” in remarks translated by the Hollywood Reporter. On Friday Del Castillo told ABC said she still wanted to continue with the project, “more than before”.
Del Castillo, who played a cartel boss in the Spanish-language TV series La Reina del Sur, arranged the meeting between the actor Sean Penn and El Chapo in January that made headlines after it led to the capture of Mexico’s most wanted man. The actor said neither Penn nor the two Hollywood producers who attended the meeting with El Chapo and have links to Hollywood director Oliver Stone would now be involved in her project.
“I think that all this is already kind of tainted,” she said. “I just have my reasons … because I was left out and I don’t want anything to hurt my new project.”
Earlier this month, Oliver Stone denied reports he planned a blockbuster film starring Penn as El Chapo. The TV documentary El Chapo and Sean Penn: Bungle in the Jungle alleges the Oscar-winning film-maker was willing to pay $6m (£4.25m) for the rights to the story.
Penn, who wrote about his encounter with El Chapo in an article for Rolling Stone magazine, has repeatedly said he was in Mexico as a journalist and had no intention of pursuing a film featuring the drug lord. However, the documentary – which aired on 10 March on the US channel Reelz – suggests he was meeting with El Chapo to study the cartel boss’s mannerisms ahead of portraying him.
Del Castillo told the New Yorker that she had no idea Penn planned an interview before arriving for the meeting with El Chapo, an account which Penn denies.
“Sean stands by his article as accurate,” a spokesperson for Penn told CNN. “Kate also fact-checked it before it went to print. She worked closely with Penn and Rolling Stone throughout the process, which she was very involved in.”
El Chapo is said to have wanted to see a biopic made that would rival Netflix’s hit show Narcos, about the Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. Mexican authorities have said that Penn’s meeting with Guzmán helped lead them to the drug baron.
