Sean Penn says he has "terrible regrets" about how his published interview with Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán has been received, and blames the Mexican government for pushing a false narrative about how the drug lord's recapture went down.
In an interview segment with 60 Minutes' Charlie Rose that aired Thursday night, Penn said he wanted the post–Rolling Stone article discussion to center on the war on drugs, not on the controversy surrounding El Chapo's recapture.
“We all want this drug problem to stop,” he said. “We all want the killings in Chicago to stop.
"My article has failed."
El Chapo was recaptured last week one day before Rolling Stone published Penn’s account of his meeting with the drug lord in October.
But Penn told 60 Minutes that Mexico's narrative of how the fugitive drug lord was recaptured — specifically hanging it on a recent visit — is false.
"There is this myth about the visit that we made," Penn said in the interview. "We had met with him many weeks earlier on Oct. 2, in a place nowhere near where he was captured."
Mexican Attorney General Arely Gómez told a local radio station after the predawn raid that the meeting was an essential element in the drug lord’s capture, Reuters reported.
The meeting “was an essential element, because we were following [Guzmán’s] lawyer, and the lawyer took us to these people and to this meeting,” Gómez said.
Penn said he believes the Mexican government is spreading the rumor because they were "clearly very humiliated by the notion that someone found him before they did."
He added that Mexico may have been spreading the misinformation in an effort to put the actor in the crosshairs of the cartel. However, when asked by Rose if he felt his life was in danger, Penn simply said, "No."
The full interview will air Sunday.