Mexican actress Kate del Castillo has stepped out of the fictional drug trafficker roles she played on TV and finds herself involved in the real world of drug capos.
The 43-year-old Del Castillo had her most memorable role in 2011 playing a drug kingpin in "The Queen of the South," a TV series based on a book written by Spanish writer Arturo Pérez-Reverte.
Del Castillo has long been fascinated with "El Chapo," to whom she wrote a public appeal in 2012, urging him to do good and saying, "Today I believe more in Chapo Guzmán than in the governments that hide the truth from me." Del Castillo later told The Associated Press that "nobody understood the irony, the sarcasm and the joke I was making" in the letter that was posted to her Twitter account.
But many saw it as fitting in with her on- and off-screen persona.
"The Queen of the South set up an interview with El Chapo. I wouldn't expect any less of her," Pérez-Reverte wrote in a blog.
Actor Sean Penn, who conducted the interview, wrote that del Castillo was first contacted by the drug kingpin's lawyer in 2012 after she sent the public appeal, which included urging him to start "trafficking with love." El Chapo's representatives contacted her again after his arrest in February 2014, when "gringos were scrambling to tell his story," Penn wrote.
Del Castillo has the kind of connections in Mexico's movie and film industry to actually get a film made.
She's the daughter of famed Mexican actor Eric del Castillo and has been a star herself for more than 20 years.
But it was unclear how far along the planning for the movie actually was. Del Castillo had not publicly commented on the revelations as of Sunday.
It was also unclear whether U.S. and Mexican authorities were investigating Del Castillo, who lives in Los Angeles and reportedly has U.S. citizenship.
Married twice, Del Castillo also was linked romantically to actor Demian Bichir, who co-starred with her in the 2005 film "American Visa."
Castillo is one of several Mexican actresses who have achieved some success with "cross-over" careers in the United States.
She appeared in the 2002 PBS series "American Family," about a Latino family in Los Angeles.