Sean Penn Tells Charlie Rose the Point of His El Chapo Interview

Yes, that’s right! Even if you read Sean Penn’s Rolling Stone article about his clandestine meeting with Mexican drug lord, El Chapo, he doesn’t think anyone got the point. That’s what he says in his upcoming “60 Minutes” interview with Charlie Rose after telling his host that the Mexican government made up that stuff about him having anything to do with the capture of El Chapo. He thinks they did it to put him in the Mexican cartel’s crosshairs, but he’s not scared.

“This is somebody who — upon whose interview could I begin a conversation about the policy of the war on drugs. That was my simple idea,” Penn said. Well, the Rolling Stone article, “El Chapo Speaks: a Secret Visit with the Most Wanted Man in the World” was really hard to read with a long and overly dramatic lead up to Sean Penn’s meeting with El Chapo. The actor gives a lot of detail about his own feelings the entire time, so much so that it’s really not unfair that some journalists described the piece as self-indulgent.

When he actually meets Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera, Penn manages to get in a question about Donald Trump (LOL!) and whether El Chapo ever met Pablo Escobar. He also works in a Scarface scene. “Say hello to the bad guy!” In the Q&A part, Penn poses a lot of questions about his early life, how he gets along with his mom, how he got into the drug trade, his thoughts on violence and so on. If there is a nugget in there that could start a new conversation about the policy on the war, yes, we missed it.

So even though Sean Penn now feels that his article was a failure, that is the nice thing about being a celebrity. Unlike most journalists, you get to go on television and explain it all.

The entire interview will air on 60 minutes on CBS on Sunday January 17th. Check your TV schedule for local times. Also check on 60 Minutes online videos. They have a prior 60 Minutes segment concerning how El Chapo escaped already on there, and they will probably have the Sean Penn interview up there next week (with lots of ads unless you pay them).