Video Interview: Cowboy Cartel’s Dan Johnstone & Castor Fernandez

The new documentary series Cowboy Cartel debuted last week on Apple TV+. It charts the true story of unlikely hero Scott Lawson, a rookie FBI agent from rural Tennessee, whose investigation took down the Treviño brothers, the leaders of Los Zetas, one of the most powerful cartels in Mexico. The doc series features first-time interviews with Lawson, who broke the case, as well as IRS agent Steve Pennington; Irving police officers Steve Junker, Brian Schutt and Kim Williams; Assistant United States Attorney Doug Gardner; Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist Ginger Thompson; and Joe Tone, the author of Bones: Brothers, Horses, Cartels, and the Borderland Dream, among many others.

Dan Johnstone and Castor Fernandez, executive producers and directors of Cowboy Cartel, take TV Real Weekly behind the scenes of the new documentary series. They talk about gaining access to Lawson and others for interviews and having Eric Newman, who is known for his work on scripted series such as Narcos and Griselda, on board the producing team.