Sean Penn has used a new interview with CBS’ Charlie Rose to break his silence over his infamous interview with Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, the Mexican drug lord who was recently detained by authorities after twice escaping from maximum security prisons in the country.

The Hollywood star’s interview with Guzman appeared on Saturday (January 9th) on the website of Rolling Stone magazine, the day after his arrest. It was conducted at an undisclosed location in Mexico in late 2015, with Guzman allegedly speaking because he wanted his life story to be made into a movie.

Sean PennSean Penn has spoken about El Chapo's arrest and his Rolling Stone article for the first time

However, authorities are believed to have tracked him from that point before making the arrest in January, with some pundits even suggesting that Penn could face prosecution for his part in arranging the interview – though legal experts consider this eventuality to be rather unlikely.

Penn therefore sat down with Rose to put forward his side of the story on Friday morning (January 15th) and defend himself from criticism that Rolling Stone should have sent a professional journalist rather than an actor to conduct the conversation.

More: Legal experts say Sean Penn is unlikely to face prosecution over ‘El Chapo’ interview

According to the New York Daily News, Penn says in the interview – which goes out in full later on Friday via ’60 Minutes’ – “I have a terrible regret. I have a regret that the entire discussion about this article ignores its purpose, which was to contribute to this conversation on the war on drugs.”

“We all want this drug problem to stop… We are the consumer. Whether you agree with Sean Penn or not, there is a complicity there. And if you are in the moral right, or on the far left, just as many of your children are doing these drugs… And how much time have they spent in the last week since this article come [sic] out, talking about that? One per cent? I think that'd be generous.”

“My article has failed,” he rued finally, intimating that it lacked any in-depth discussion about the cartels themselves. Penn also apparently denied that his interview had anything to do with Guzman’s capture, despite Mexican security forces revealing that they picked up the trail because of it.

“There is this myth about the visit that we made, my colleagues and I with El Chapo, that it was - as the Attorney General of Mexico is quoted – ‘essential’ to his capture,” Penn mused. “We had met with him many weeks earlier… on October 2nd, in a place nowhere near where he was captured.”

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