Summary: Sean Penn’s attorney warned Netflix that El Chapo may hurt the actor if it airs The Day I Met El Chapo.
Sean Penn is scared. According to The New York Times, the Hollywood actor is afraid that El Chapo may murder him if Netflix airs a documentary that implies Penn was the reason the drug kingpin was apprehended in 2015.
Penn’s lawyer sent an ominous letter to Netflix stating that “blood will be on their hands if this film causes bodily harm.” The film, The Day I Met El Chapo, focuses on the day that Penn met with El Chapo in 2015 in order to conduct an interview for Rolling Stone. The story was published a day after the fugitive was arrested.
Before his 2015 arrest, El Chapo was one of the most wanted men in the world. He was known as a drug lord who murdered and kidnapped during his reign, and he had successfully escaped into the jungle before his meeting with Penn.
The meeting between Penn and El Chapo (Joaquin Guzman) was arranged by actress Kate del Castillo, who created the documentary. Castillo revealed to The Daily Mail that she had been in talks with El Chapo for months before the arrangement, but that she and El Chapo did not have a sexual relationship. Instead, she and Penn had hooked up but it did not lead to anything romantic.
“I never fell for him, we had sex. Sorry but we are both adults, single, and something was going on but that was it, it was business,” del Castillo told Good Morning America.
Penn is fearful of del Castillo’s film because it allegedly implies that he led the Department of Justice to El Chapo. Penn did not participate in the documentary, and he denies cooperating with authorities to arrest the drug kingpin.
“It is reprehensible that, in their ongoing, relentless efforts to gain additional attention and publicity, Ms del Castillo and her team (who have zero firsthand knowledge) have sought to create this profoundly false, foolish and reckless narrative,” Penn’s spokesperson said. “The notion that Mr. Penn or anyone on his behalf alerted DoJ to the trip is a complete fabrication and baldfaced lie. It never happened, nor would there have been any reason for it to have happened.”
Netflix said that Penn had numerous opportunities to provide his side of the story, but he had refused to participate.
“Penn was given the opportunity on multiple occasions to participate in The Day I Met El Chapo and did not do so. The events surrounding the now-infamous meeting have been well covered, including by Penn himself in Rolling Stone and his many public comments since. The only new ground we’re breaking with this series is to give Kate a chance to finally tell her side of this stranger-than-fiction story,” Netflix said.