Penn has a very good reason to deny the notion put forward by multiple interview subjects in the documentary – he’s reportedly worried that if this becomes common knowledge among Mexican drug cartels, he and/or his family could be targets for assassination. To this end, Penn attempted to use the legal means at his disposal to stop Netflix from putting the documentary up on its service, or get them to remove references to Penn’s having told the DOJ where they could find El Chapo, but the documentary was indeed released in unaltered form. For producer David Broom’s part, he states “[w]e never say in this documentary that Sean Penn is in cahoots with the D.O.J.” Penn and Mexican actress del Castillo met with El Chapo along with two others in October, 2015. Twelve hours after the interview, Mexican authorities conducted a raid but found that El Chapo had already left. He was then caught three months later, no thanks to Sean Penn, according to Sean Penn. The Day I Met El Chapo: The Kate del Castillo Story is available now on Netflix.
