Sean Penn has done a lot of shitty things over the years, but the one he’s worried about coming back to haunt him is his 2015 interview with now-imprisoned Mexican drug cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. (No one seems to care about the domestic violence allegations against him, least of all Penn.) That interview resulted in the piece Penn wrote for Rolling Stone that brought us the phrase “I am Sean’s dubitable paranoia,” as well as a hashtag, “#NoSeanPenndejos,” through which the people of Mexico mocked the actor for his self-important adventure in pseudo-gonzo journalism.
Mexican TV star Kate del Castillo—who set up and translated the meeting between Penn and Guzman—also called bullshit on Penn, saying in a 2016 New Yorker article that he failed to mention that he was writing an article about the meeting before it happened. Now Penn and del Castillo are at odds once more, this time over del Castillo’s new Netflix docuseries The Day I Met El Chapo: The Kate Del Castillo Story. The documentary apparently suggests that Penn tipped off the U.S. Department of Justice to Guzman’s location before their 2015 meeting—a statement that could get Penn killed, or at the very least owned some more on Twitter.
According to TMZ (via Variety), Penn’s lawyers have requested that Netflix “at the very least, eliminate any references to their client contacting (the Justice Department) prior to meeting Chapo.” Netflix counters that Penn was given several opportunities to participate in the series, saying in a statement:
Sean 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.
I am Sean’s ovum-spackled visage.