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In the eleven years since Desperate Housewives has been off the air Eva Longoria seemed to be having a more visible personal life than professional one. Behind the scenes she was quietly building up experience as a producer and director on projects that amplified the voices of Latinos. In 2019 it was announced that she would direct her first feature film about Richard Montanez, a janitor at Frito-Lay who came up with Flamin’ Hot Cheetos (there are differing accounts on the accuracy of this origin story, but that is the film’s synopsis). Flamin’ Hot was finally released this year, out now on Hulu and Disney+, and you better believe Eva is doing the most to promote it, including this new interview with The Hollywood Reporter:

She earned her master’s while filming Desperate Housewives: While still a daytime soap actress (she appeared in more than 300 episodes of The Young and the Restless between 2001 and 2003), Longoria had met the celebrated labor leader Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the National Farm Workers Association. When Longoria reconnected with her years later seeking guidance on Latino issues, Huerta recommended she read Rodolfo Acuna’s book Occupied America: A History of Chicanos. Longoria emailed Acuna, whom she met for coffee, and she then audited his Chicano 101 class at California State University Northridge… After Chicano 101, one class led to the next and to the next and, by 2013, it all added up to a master’s in Chicano Studies.

Housewives, Shmousewives–get a degree!: Though she was inspired to get her degree because of her desire to effect change, there was also the requisite amount of parental guilt involved. “I was the huge disappointment in my family,” she says. “They are all educators. I’m like, ‘I’m kind of on the biggest show in the world right now.’ And they were like, ‘Right, but you don’t have your master’s.’”

Kerry Washington is her cheerleader: Longoria credits Kerry Washington with giving her the final shove she needed to direct a feature after years in television. In 2018, the two friends were developing workplace comedy 24/7 with Universal and were interviewing directors, none of whom were a fit. “She kept saying, ‘Why aren’t you doing this?’ And I was like, ‘No, I can’t do a film. I’m not ready for this,’” remembers Longoria of her conversation with Washington. “She convinced [Universal Pictures president] Peter Cramer and [chairwoman] Donna Langley to hire me for that movie.”

“I know in creative spaces that it often takes a cheerleader to say, ‘You can do this!’” says Washington. 24/7 ended up not getting made, but the validation of having a studio sign off on Longoria as a director was such that when her agent sent her the script for Flamin’ Hot, she did not hesitate to ask for a meeting as a potential director.

More love from Kerry: The film “really leans on all of her strengths,” says Washington. “Not just as a director, but also as a human being. When you think about the life of advocacy that she’s lived and how she has fought to have a seat and a voice in larger corporate settings, and then you look at her skill set as a director and her taste, it’s just like, there’s no way this film happens without her.”

She stands with the unions, unsurprisingly: “The archaic way in which we shoot shows and movies is unsustainable,” Longoria says when asked about the ongoing strike. “We cannot be doing 18-hour days. Nobody can do 18-hour days. When we do 12-hour days, I’m like, ‘When do you see your child?’ I get so anxious about my crew…. The way in which we produce content today, for platforms, streamers, networks, [it’s] like this monster that cannot ever be satiated. We have to constantly keep working, and the labor drives that. So if labor drives that, we need to reevaluate how we pay that labor.”

[From The Hollywood Reporter]

So I have two immediate takeaways: first, the bit about her being the black sheep of the family cracks me up. Doesn’t it seem like parental guilt is the one, unifying force of humanity, shared across all peoples? I’m Jewish and I know we’re culturally ascribed this dynamic a lot, but I see it everywhere. And since I have no practical resolution to offer, I react with laughter. My second main takeaway is I want Kerry Washington for a friend! She’ll encourage you, give you a kick in the pants when you need it and even come to your defense when you make a very public misstep. I hope they find another project to develop together that actually gets made.

Aside from being a well-written profile on Eva, the article also included some fascinating research on how Latinos go to see movies more than any other racial or ethnic group, per capita, in this country, which I did not know. But of course that statistic is tempered by the paltry percentages of Latino characters depicted in the movies they’re going to see: 5% overall and merely 3.5% for leading or co-leading roles. After yesterday’s ruling from the Supreme Court, though, I’m not feeling that optimistic about movements towards inclusion in our country.

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photos credit: Jeffrey Mayer / Avalon and via Instagram/THR