The Mexican actress who brought Sean Penn to El Chapo isn’t talking now

LIMA, Peru — Kate del Castillo might want to make up her mind about whether she should explain her dealings with Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.

The Mexican actress has been at the eye of the storm over Hollywood star Sean Penn’s highly controversial Rolling Stone interview with the world’s most wanted drug lord. That’s because she helped set up the interview with Guzman, who’s also an alleged mass murderer. She's currently being investigated for her contacts with him, specifically for possible money laundering.

Penn and del Castillo have been criticized from all angles, including the former’s failure to ask tough questions about El Chapo’s role in the bloodbath unleashed by the cocaine trade in his native Mexico, and how the celebs’ amateur cloak-and-dagger contacts with Guzman allegedly helped law enforcement track down the fugitive narco. 

But the biggest controversy, in Mexico at least, has been about the flirtatious text messages between del Castillo, 43, and El Chapo, who had been on the run in rugged northwestern Mexico since last July when he sensationally broke free from jail a second time.

There have also been questions about whether El Chapo, who is thought to have amassed a billion-dollar fortune as head of the ruthless Sinaloa cartel, had helped finance del Castillo’s tequila business. One of Mexico’s best-known leading ladies, she’s also the star of the telenovela “La Reina del Sur,” about the glamorous female head of a drug-trafficking organization.

Del Castillo, who lives in Los Angeles, initially sounded eager to give her version of events, sharing this with her nearly 3 million Twitter followers on Jan. 13:

But now, with the heat mounting and Mexican prosecutors due to question her in Mexico’s Los Angeles consulate, del Castillo seems to have changed her mind.

According to Univision, the actress sent them a brief statement in Spanish that read: “I don’t have any reason to give explanations to the press. If I don’t talk it is because my lawyers have advised me so given that the [Mexican] government wants to destroy me by force.”

More from GlobalPost: El Chapo's lawyer says Sean Penn lied and should testify about the 'stupidities he said'

Penn, for all the criticism he has received — including for allowing El Chapo final approval of his 10,000-word interview — has at least explained himself publicly, including on “60 Minutes.” 

During that interview with Charlie Rose he even admitted his interview had “failed” to achieve his aim of sparking a conversation about the war on drugs.

If del Castillo feels any remorse, or indeed has any other thoughts about the international storm around her contacts with the world’s most infamous narco, we may never know them — unless she is forced to talk in court.