Kate del Castillo El Chapo interview with Diane Sawyer

The Mexican telenovela actress who brought Sean Penn to El Chapo last year told Diane Sawyer that she didn’t know the Oscar-winning actor planned to interview the notorious drug lord for Rolling Stone.

In her first TV interview that aired Friday on ABC, Kate del Castillo said it wasn’t until she and Penn were on a mountain in Mexico with Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán did he indicate plans to write a story. “I was just like, okay this is new for me,” she told Sawyer. “I wanted to grab Sean and put him aside, ‘why didn’t you tell me this?’ There was no way I would do this.”

Del Castillo told Sawyer that she remains angry at Penn, whom she thought would help her make a movie about the most powerful drug lord in the world. “I think he was never interested in a movie,” Del Castillo said. “He wouldn’t be there if it was not for me. I’m angry at myself, because I believe in people. I didn’t know Sean Penn.”

In response, Penn released a statement to 20/20 which said, “I like Kate. She’s energetic, sweet and has heart. At no point did I express an interest in producing, directing or acting in her film.’

Despite the amount of negative attention she has received in the U.S. and Mexico, del Castillo still plans to move ahead with a movie about El Chapo. (She once tweeted about Guzman while working as a telenovela actress in Mexico and he responded by asking her to help him tell his story). Now back in prison, Guzman remains in contact with the Los Angeles-based del Castillo through his lawyers.

He is not funding the movie, insisted del Castillo. In the meantime, she said she fears returning to Mexico because she thinks she will be arrested.

“I am so so sorry that I put my entire family through it because that was not the point,” said del Castillo, who apparently has a project in the works at Netflix. “There are many things happened after we left, and for that I will always be sorry. There is so many innocent people that [are] dying and just to think because of me being there led to something like that, that’s something I’m going to have to live with.”

To watch the interview, click here.

“There are many things happened after we left, and for that I will always be sorry,” del Castillo told Sawyer on Friday’s 20/20. “There is so many innocent people that [are] dying and just to think because of me being there led to something like that, that’s something I’m going to have to live with.”