Mexican actress Kate del Castillo and Hollywood actor Sean Penn have been embroiled in controversy since the revelation that they met with Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the most wanted drug lord in the world, in person while he was on the lam last year.

Mexican authorities want to interrogate her as a witness in an investigation and have insinuated they could be potentially investigating her for allegedly taking money from Guzman for her tequila company, Honor del Castillo, according to the newspaper El Universal.

This past January, del Castillo’s private text messages with El Chapo were leaked to the media, suggesting another kind of scandal — that the two of them could be romantically involved.

But del Castillo is now sharing her side of the story and insists in an interview with ABC News’s Diane Sawyer that there was nothing romantic between her and the drug kingpin, whom she met in person last October.

del Castillo told Sawyer:

“Oh, my God, no, not at all. It’s just so not like that, and that’s one of the frustrations I have. That I wish I could have every single text that I sent with me, you know, to tell everybody how out of context they are. There was no reason why we wouldn’t be friendly.”

Del Castillo says the leaked messages were selectively chosen and released out of context.

“They have put them out of context. So it looks like I’m having an affair, almost, with a guy and that’s what makes me so angry.”

 

She said Guzman first reached out to her in summer 2014 through his lawyer, who she said told her that Guzman wanted to give her the rights to make a movie about his life. The drug lord had been re-arrested in February 2014.

She claims she jumped at the chance and told almost no one about the project, except for two movie producers she brought on as she began to assemble her team.

Read more of this article see a video of the 2020 interview on ABCNews.