--- title: Watch Stephen Colbert Audition for El Chapo Biopic Role description: This could be Colbert's next big breakout role. canonical: https://time.com/4176884/stephen-colbert-el-chapo-audition/ author: Entertainment Weekly article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-01-12T14:55:19.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T07:28:37.475Z og:title: Watch Stephen Colbert Audition for El Chapo Biopic Role og:description: This could be Colbert's next big breakout role og:url: https://time.com/4176884/stephen-colbert-el-chapo-audition/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Watch Stephen Colbert Audition for El Chapo Biopic Role twitter:description: This could be Colbert's next big breakout role twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Watch Stephen Colbert Audition for El Chapo Biopic Role by [Christian Holub / Entertainment Weekly](https://time.com/author/entertainment-weekly/) ## Christian Holub / Entertainment Weekly Jan 12, 2016 2:55 PM UTC by [Christian Holub / Entertainment Weekly](https://time.com/author/entertainment-weekly/) ## Christian Holub / Entertainment Weekly Jan 12, 2016 2:55 PM UTC One of the weekend’s biggest news stories was the revelation that Mexican forces had recaptured notorious drug lord El Chapo, and that El Chapo’s interview with [Sean Penn for ](http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/el-chapo-speaks-20160109)[_Rolling Stone_](http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/el-chapo-speaks-20160109)helped alert authorities to his whereabouts. Apparently El Chapo agreed to do the interview because he wants to make a movie about his life. Such a biopic is still probably years away, but Stephen Colbert is ready: The _Late Show_ host put together an audition tape for the role of El Chapo and played it during Monday’s show. With a theoretical El Chapo biopic still in the conception stages, not even genre is decided yet. Colbert therefore played the role in various forms: pun-tastic gangster movie (“el-bango, bango”), sci-fi _Star Wars_ rip-off (“you tell the DEA that El Chapo just stole back the Millennium Falcon”), even farcial comedy. Watch the audition clip above. While we await the inevitable feature-length biopic, Univision will debut _Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán: El Varón de la Droga_ (_Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán: The Drug Baron_) in the fall of 2016\. The unauthorized series based on the Mexican drug lord does not yet have a lead actor in place — maybe they’ll keep Colbert’s audition tape in mind. _This_ [_article_](http://www.ew.com/article/2016/01/12/stephen-colbert-auditions-el-chapo-biopic) _originally appeared on_ [_EW.com_](http://www.ew.com) Watch Stephen Colbert Audition for El Chapo Biopic Role ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4176884/stephen-colbert-el-chapo-audition/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4176884/stephen-colbert-el-chapo-audition/"},"headline":"Watch Stephen Colbert Audition for El Chapo Biopic Role","datePublished":"2016-01-12T14:55:19.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T07:28:37.475Z","description":"This could be Colbert's next big breakout role","url":"https://time.com/4176884/stephen-colbert-el-chapo-audition/","keywords":["Newsfeed","stephen colbert","El Chapo","celebrity"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Christian Holub / Entertainment Weekly"}],"articleSection":"","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4176884/stephen-colbert-el-chapo-audition/","name":"Watch Stephen Colbert Audition for El Chapo Biopic Role"}}]}] ```