With just hours to go before The Day I Met El Chapo: The Kate del Castillo Story debuts on Netflix, Sean Penn has come up empty in trying to get changes made to the self-described documentary series. 
 
 Despite claims by other outlets that the Oscar winner is trying to block the three-episode series by the Mexican actress, Deadline has learned that Penn’s sole aim was to see his part in the infamous October 2015 meeting with drug lord Joaquín Guzmán Loera depicted accurately. An aim augmented by concerns for his safety that has met with silence from both the streaming service and producers at 25/7 Productions, we hear. 
 
 The 25/7 Production series alleges that the Oscar winner gave the Department of Justice a heads-up on the get-together with the runaway and ruthless El Chapo. 
 
 “This is nothing but a cheap, National Enquirer-esque tale spun be a delusional person whose hunger for fame is both tawdry and transparent,” a spokesperson for Penn told Deadline today of the series that premieres early Friday on Netflix. 
 
 Penn later wrote about the meeting in a much criticized and widely read Rolling Stone article that came out just after the hiding Guzman was captured by Mexican authorities in early 2016. At the time, anonymous Mexican law enforcement officials claimed that Penn and del Castillo’s meeting with Guzmán led them to the drug lord. Claims that Penn disputed and have since faded. 
 
 “It is reprehensible that, in their ongoing, relentless efforts to gain additional attention and publicity, Ms. del Castillo and her team (who have zero firsthand knowledge) have sought to create this profoundly false, foolish, and reckless narrative,” a spokesperson for Penn added Thursday of the El Chapo series that Netflix is distributing. “The notion that Mr. Penn or anyone on his behalf alerted DOJ to the trip is a complete fabrication and bald-faced lie,” the statement adds. “It never happened, nor would there have been any reason for it to have happened.” 
 
 Neither Netflix nor the El Chapo producers responded to request for comment on Penn’s concerns. “Sean Penn was not trying to kill this or stop this, he just wanted to see it and then thought it need a re-edit,” a source tells Deadline of the actor’s original desire when he was made aware of the project. 
 
 In fact, a move by Penn’s CAA agent Bryan Lourd to get the actor a viewing of the finished product also hit a wall initially. When Penn did finally see the El Chapo series just over a month ago, he asked for it to be edited to more closely reflect what he said was the truth. Lawyers for Penn also informed Netflix in correspondence that the Mystic River star was worried associates of El Chapo would potentially seek revenge against the actor. 
 
 As can been seen from the trailer below, the El Chapo series mainly focuses on del Castillo, who’s political thriller Ingobernable series was renewed in April for a second season with Netflix. 
 
 Having escaped from a Mexican prison in July 2015, the recaptured Guzman was extradited to the U.S. by our southern neighbor’s government in January to face American justice over criminal activity from his role as the head of the Sinaloa cartel. ||||| “It is reprehensible that, in their ongoing, relentless efforts to gain additional attention and publicity, Ms. del Castillo and her team (who have zero firsthand knowledge) have sought to create this profoundly false, foolish, and reckless narrative,” Mark Fabiani, a spokesman for Mr. Penn, said in an email. “The notion that Mr. Penn or anyone on his behalf alerted D.O.J. to the trip is a complete fabrication and baldfaced lie. It never happened, nor would there have been any reason for it to have happened.” 
 
 David Broome, who produced the series, said, “We never say in this documentary that Sean Penn is in cahoots with the D.O.J.” 
 
 When Mr. Penn wrote about the meeting with Mr. Guzmán for Rolling Stone, it prompted controversy and befuddlement over how an Academy Award-winning actor was able to find and sit down with a notorious drug dealer who had twice escaped prison. 
 
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 To many in the United States, Ms. del Castillo was initially a confusing character in the story, but “The Day I Met El Chapo” examines her role in facilitating the meeting. 
 
 The documentary series began last year when Ms. del Castillo met with Mr. Broome, a reality show producer on shows like “The Biggest Loser” and “Ultimate Beastmaster,” and they decided to make something that focused on her side of the story. 
 
 “Her point of view had really never been told,” Mr. Broome said in an interview. (Ms. del Castillo was the subject of a lengthy New Yorker article last year.) 
 
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 In addition to Ms. del Castillo, her friends and family members are interviewed, along with journalists and law enforcement officials. Mr. Broome said that he and Netflix both tried to get Mr. Penn’s participation, but received no response. 
 
 Then, in late September, one of Mr. Penn’s lawyers, Mathew Rosengart, requested that Mr. Penn be able to see the movie, claiming that similar requests from the actor’s agent, Bryan Lourd, went ignored. 
 
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 After Mr. Penn watched it, Mr. Broome said, he said that he wanted to be interviewed and demanded that changes be made. 
 
 “They tried to put on pressure and demand we change the documentary,” Mr. Broome said. 
 
 In a letter sent to the lawyer for Mr. Broome’s production company on Oct. 14, Mr. Boutrous said Ms. del Castillo was providing a “reckless, misleading and self-serving” account. 
 
 “It is profoundly disappointing that Netflix and your clients have chosen to disregard the extreme danger they are knowingly creating,” he wrote. 
 
 In an earlier letter that Netflix’s general counsel, David Hyman, wrote to Mr. Rosengart, he said that “to the extent that Mr. Penn may be in any physical danger, it is as result of his decision to meet with El Chapo in 2015.” 
 
 In a statement, Netflix said: “Penn was given the opportunity on multiple occasions to participate in ‘The Day I Met El Chapo’ and did not do so. The events surrounding the now-infamous meeting have been well covered, including by Penn himself in Rolling Stone and his many public comments since. The only new ground we’re breaking with this series is to give Kate a chance to finally tell her side of this stranger-than-fiction story.” ||||| Mexican-born actress Kate del Castillo finally spoke out at length about her and Sean Penn's meeting with then-fugitive Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, claiming that parts of Penn's recollection of what led to the encounter aren't true. 
 
 In an article in The New Yorker that was available online Friday, del Castillo expresses frustration over Penn's lengthy Rolling Stone article following the meeting, which she said she didn't hear about until she and Penn were in the presence of the drug lord. 
 
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 In the lengthy piece, Penn wrote that the group who traveled to meet Guzman — while he was on the run — was stopped at a military checkpoint, but allowed through when soldiers recognized Guzman's son, Alfredo Guzmán, who was traveling with the group. 
 
 "This scene, del Castillo maintains, did not occur; they didn't go through any military checkpoint," The New Yorker article, by Robert Draper, said. Two producers traveling with del Castillo and Penn also don't recall the military checkpoint, according to the article. 
 
 Sean Penn, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman and actress Kate del Castillo AFP-Getty Images; FilmMagic 
 
 Penn maintained to the New Yorker that his article is accurate. To The Associated Press, Penn said, "I stand by my piece." 
 
 Del Castillo also said that, while Penn maintains he told her he intended the trip to be a journalistic endeavor, she was taken aback when he told El Chapo he had been assigned a Rolling Stone story about the infamous drug lord. 
 
 Related: Who Is Kate del Castillo, And What Did She Write to El Chapo? 
 
 "From our first meeting, I discussed with her my intention to interview Joaquín Guzmán for an article in connection with the meeting that she facilitated. We discussed it again during the flight and the trip to Mexico with our partners," Penn said in a statement, according to The New Yorker. 
 
 The reason del Castillo says she traveled to meet Guzman was because he had signed over the rights to his life story to her and tasked her with creating some sort of movie, miniseries or documentary out of it. 
 
 Guzman had never met del Castillo, but was able to communicate to the outspoken actress, through his lawyers, that he admired her, The New Yorker reported. 
 
 "Maybe he thought I could understand his world, in a way," del Castillo told The New Yorker. 
 
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 Months after the actors and producers met with Guzman, he was recaptured by Mexican troops. 
 
 Mexican officials said that it was Guzman's communication with actors and producers that helped them nail down his whereabouts. "I wanted to die," del Castillo told the New Yorker. 
 
 Related: Texts Purportedly Reveal El Chapo's Eagerness to Meet Actress Kate del Castillo 
 
 Del Castillo said she was left exposed when her name was excluded from a "journalist on assignment" letter that Rolling Stone's founder gave to Penn before the trip. 
 
 But she couldn't have asked to have her name on the letter because she didn't know about the article until the group got to Guzman, del Castillo said. 
 
 Amid the investigation, del Castillo is keeping a low profile in California. She said she still plans on following through with the making of a movie about El Chapo
– Sean Penn's 2015 Mexican sitdown with drug lord Joaquin Guzman (aka "El Chapo"), which he documented in an early 2016 Rolling Stone article, caused its fair share of controversy. And the ruckus isn't over yet, as the actor is now going after Netflix for a documentary on Guzman, set to start airing Friday, that Penn's spokesman says in an email to the New York Times is a "profoundly false, foolish, and reckless narrative" that could put Penn's life in danger. The actor's main bone of contention with The Day I Met El Chapo: The Kate del Castillo Story: that he thinks the three-episode film hints he assisted the DOJ in helping to capture El Chapo, who was busted right around the time Penn's Rolling Stone article went public. Del Castillo, a Mexican actress, was with Penn when he met with Guzman, and the film is said to take place from her POV. Producer David Broome denies there's anything in the film that says Penn "is in cahoots" with the Justice Department and that both he and Netflix tried to see if Penn wanted to take part (Penn reportedly never answered); Netflix backs that up, saying in a statement "Penn was given the opportunity on multiple occasions to participate." Broome says when Penn saw an advance copy of the film, he demanded changes. Deadline notes that Penn's lawyers contacted Netflix shortly after and said Penn was afraid Guzman's associates might go after him if the film wasn't altered. A letter from Penn's lawyer to Netflix notes that "blood will be on [Netflix's] hands if this film causes bodily harm" to Penn. (In the end, Penn thought his Rolling Stone article on El Chapo was a failure.)