Kate del Castillo says she feels “panic” over returning to Mexico

“He sought me out.” That’s how the Mexican actress Kate del Castillo responds when journalist Jorge Ramos asks her why she agreed to meet with Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, once the most-wanted drug trafficker in the United States and Mexico. In an interview that will be broadcast next Sunday on Univisión, Del Castillo will break the silence that she has kept on the subject since March, when she spoke to ABC News.

The actress has confessed that she feels “panic about returning to Mexico” given the uncertainty about her legal situation. Del Castillo filed an appeal in a bid to avoid being detained, after the Mexican state attorney revealed that it was investigating her for her links to El Chapo, after both the actress and US actor Sean Penn met in secret with the drug lord.

The Mexican state attorney has revealed that it is investigating her for her links to El Chapo

The star of Mexican TV show La Reina del Sur, in which she plays a drug trafficker, reveals in the interview that she is still working on a project to portray the life of El Chapo on the big screen. “It was him that told me that he wanted to give me the rights to his life story, he is a really interesting character for me,” she tells her interviewer.

Del Castillo has given several accounts of her meeting with El Chapo in October. The actress told journalist Robert Draper that when the Mexican state attorney said it was investigating actors, actresses and producers for their links to Guzmán, she wanted to die, and also claimed to be the victim of a witch-hunt on the part of the Mexican government. She also offered a saccharine, romantic account of the meeting in Mexican weekly Proceso, and finally talked to ABC News, to whom she confessed that she took advantage of the attraction Guzmán felt for her in order to get closer to him.

Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán is currently in the process of being extradited to the United States from Ciudad Juárez, in the north of Mexico. The drug lord was taken in May to a prison there after spending five months in El Altiplano, the jail from which he escaped via a tunnel on July 11, 2015. There are currently 75 officers in that jail dedicated solely to guarding El Chapo.