The Reinvention of Eva Longoria

In 2012, Eva Longoria wrapped up the eighth and final season of Desperate Housewives, and she had a decision to make about her future. “That last year of Housewives,” she says, “I remember getting every single show offered to me to star in … to star in … to star in …”

Amid the throes of the streaming era, it’s easy to forget the omnipresence of a network breakout like Housewives. In its first season in 2004, Housewives was pulling in more viewers on Sunday nights than the average Sunday Night Football game does in 2023. The show — along with early-aughts entries Grey’s Anatomy and Lost — helped catapult network ABC back to primetime dominance. Bob Iger, who was named CEO of ABC parent company Disney in the year after Housewives’ debut, “would take us to dinner, individually,” remembers Longoria. (By its last season, Housewives’ prominence had waned — its May 2012 series finale clocked in with half the viewership high of its first season — a decline proportional to the overall downturn of linear television). At the time, the age of the megamerger was just dawning and streaming was nascent. Still, there were signs of what was to come: In 2011, Comcast closed its acquisition of Universal, and a year later, Netflix would debut its first original series.

Still, Longoria could have done most anything she wanted — at least, between the hours of 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. on any major network. And she kept getting asked the same question: What’s next?

“I was like, ‘I can’t breathe,’” says Longoria. “I had PTSD from 24 episodes a year.” To fill the primetime slot with the customary two dozen hourlong, drama-filled episodes, the Housewives shooting schedule ran for roughly 11 months of the year. Another network series — even one where she was alone at the top of the call sheet — was something Longoria couldn’t stomach. 

“I got [offered] everything,” she says, “and I turned everything down.”

Having long harbored ambitions to produce and direct, Longoria decided it was time to pivot. But the same industry that was ready to program her into its fall lineup was more reticent to put her behind the camera for one of its series. “The industry’s definitely wary of an actor coming in [to direct],” she says. “For me, it was about overcoming that. It wasn’t sexism or racism. It was like, ‘Here comes a dumb actor.’”

At her agent’s suggestion, she began to build up a cache of directing credits. First, there was Devious Maids from Desperate Housewives creator Marc Cherry, on which she was already serving as a producer. “It was much easier to start in my own backyard,” says Longoria, who made it a habit of directing on series she had developed and produced via her UnbeliEVAble Entertainment banner, like 2015’s short-lived NBC sitcom Telenovela. Then came a steady stream of half-hour comedies (Black-ish, The Mick), hourlong dramedies (Jane the Virgin) and streaming entries (Netflix’s The Expanding Universe of Ashley Garcia). “One day,” she says, “I looked up and 10 years had passed.”

Now, Longoria has released her feature directorial debut, Searchlight’s Flamin’ Hot. The movie — which tells the somewhat disputed (more on that below) story of Richard Montañez, a Frito-Lay factory janitor turned marketing executive who channeled his Mexican heritage into the launch of the Flamin’ Hot Cheeto — became the first scripted feature to debut on both Hulu and Disney+ and screened on the White House’s South Lawn. After years of peddling herself as a director and pushing for Latino representation both in and out of Hollywood, Longoria’s director status seems to be cemented, even as Latino representation in Hollywood both on- and offscreen remains far more precarious. And while she has appreciated the glad-handing, Longoria is already pushing the goalposts back: “I’m like, ‘Well, I made one film, and we have a long way to go. Imagine when we have two films. Imagine when we have three films!’”

When Longoria first moved to L.A. 25 years ago, she would audition for the Latina roles and be told she was too white. (Longoria, a ninth-generation Texan, did not grow up speaking Spanish and instead learned the language as an adult.) She would audition for the white roles and be told she was too Latina. “I ended up playing a lot of Italians,” she says.

But Longoria says she wasn’t discouraged by the lack of roles available for Latinas. “It wasn’t as big of a conversation as it is now. The word ‘diversity’ gets thrown around so much today. Back then, there were really no efforts or programs or initiatives.” Longoria only knew what she saw — and what she saw was at least one person enjoying the type of career she could hope for. “I had Roselyn Sánchez. When I came to Hollywood, she was starring with the Rock; she was starring in Rush Hour. I felt like, ‘Oh, I see somebody who looks like me.’”

Then she became the somebody.

“I became this poster child. ‘Yay! One of us made it! A Latina’s on a major show!’” remembers Longoria. Iger asked her to host the American Latino Media Arts Awards, which at the time aired on ABC. “It’s like our Oscars, Grammy, Emmys all wrapped in one,” explains Longoria, who hosted and produced the show for 10 years. “[Iger] was like, ‘Hey, we’re airing this special, you should be part of it.’ I was the only Latino on the network.” The awards were started to recognize and uplift Latino achievement in entertainment and media, but when it came to film and television, it was difficult to find projects to fête. Says Longoria, “I just remember how difficult it was to get submissions. We would have like one award for the year because we only had one [Latino-led] movie.”

Being one of the few prominent Latinas in the industry meant that Longoria was often approached by organizations and nonprofits like UnidosUS (formerly National Council of La Raza) and League of United Latin American Citizens and asked to emcee events or film introductions to donation campaigns. “I didn’t want to be just a talking head where you give me talking points and I memorize them; I really wanted to understand the issues. And so that’s why I was like, ‘Let me just get a little educated.’”

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 Acuña’s book Occupied America: A History of Chicanos. Longoria emailed Acuña, whom she met for coffee, and she then audited his Chicano 101 class at California State University Northridge.

“I was just doing so much activism and in that moment in 2010; it was right after Obama’s first term,” recalls Longoria. She says her efforts “really stemmed from a need to know where we were as a community, where we came from. I kept saying, ‘But why is immigration so fucked up?’” In the 2010s, she heavily pushed for immigration reform, advocating for the DREAM Act, which made it easier for children of undocumented immigrants to gain legal status. 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.

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.’” 

“I remember when she started bringing her books to set,” says Cherry. “When someone starts doing something like that, it’s very unusual. You start to go, ‘Oh, she wants more.’” As her fame rose, Longoria doubled down on her activism. She executive produced 2010 doc The Harvest, about agricultural child labor in America, and 2014 doc Food Chains, about migrant agricultural labor. She co-chaired Obama’s reelection campaign in 2012 and became a consistent presence at Democratic Party events. She started appearing on CNN and in Politico with the same frequency as in the entertainment trades.

Her advocacy went hand in hand with her Hollywood ambitions. Says Longoria, “That was the goal and the purpose of getting behind the camera, creating more opportunity for my community.”

Latinos go to the theaters, per capita, more than any racial or ethnic group in the U.S. but remain woefully underrepresented in film and TV. According to a 2021 report from the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative that looked at the 100 top-grossing movies from 2007 to 2019, just 5 percent of all speaking characters onscreen were Hispanic/Latino. For leading roles or co-leading roles, that number dipped to 3.5 percent. Of the 1,300 films surveyed, Hispanics/Latinos made up 4.2 percent of the directing talent. Entering the press run for Flamin’ Hot, Longoria asked Annenberg’s Stacy Smith to find the last studio film directed by a Latina. The answer was Linda Mendoza for Chasing Papi in 2003. Longoria reasons, “We can’t get a bite at the apple every 20 years.”

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. Longoria’s pitch to Searchlight and producer DeVon Franklin, complete with a sizzle reel and musical accompaniment, clocked in at two hours —20 minutes longer than the final runtime of Flamin’ Hot. Longoria recalls with a laugh, “I was like, ‘I can’t get it down any more. I have to talk about all this stuff!’”

Says Searchlight co-president David Greenbaum, “She made the whole presentation feel the way she wanted the movie to feel, which is authentic and real and about something, but also fun and lively and meant to have a good time.” Longoria landed the job.

While Flamin’ Hot was in prep in the spring of 2021, the Lin-Manuel Miranda movie musical In the Heights was released and ran headlong into controversy when the production was accused of colorism, with critics noting that the paucity of dark-skinned Afro-Latino characters failed to reflect the true demographics of its Washington Heights setting. “That takedown was so surprising to me,” says Longoria. She had long referred to Flamin’ Hot as a love letter to her community, and she didn’t want that community to feel misrepresented. “I was like, ‘OK guys, did we read everything? Let’s read it again.’”

Longoria made sure to cast Mexican Americans and populated her below-the-line team with Hispanic talent. “I took such care with the Cholo [characters],” says Longoria. “I don’t want an actor just putting on a bandana. I don’t want to cast out of Albuquerque for this. I want Los Angeles Cholos.” She tapped Fabian Alomar and Mario Ponce, who are known for digital series Cholos Try.

It was also during prep, one month out from filming, that the L.A. Times published an investigation into the origins of the Flamin’ Hot Cheeto, in which Frito-Lay offered a statement reading, “None of our records show that Richard was involved in any capacity in the Flamin’ Hot test market.” In the article, the statement continued: “That doesn’t mean we don’t celebrate Richard, but the facts do not support the urban legend.” Since the article’s publication, there has been a flurry of responses from Montañez (“You’re going to love your company more than they will ever love you,” he said of the lack of recognition) and Frito-Lay parent company PepsiCo., which said the Times “misconstrued” its earlier statement and that, “To be clear, we have no reason to doubt the stories he shares about taking the initiative to create new product ideas for the Cheetos brand, and pitching them to past PepsiCo leaders.”

Longoria was already on location in Albuquerque at the time and says she did not know the Times story was coming. “It just appeared one Sunday,” she says, adding that she discovered it only when friends began to text her about it. She insists that the report didn’t change the script or their approach to the film, which is told from Montañez’s point of view, complete with first-person voiceover narration. Leading up to the release of Flamin’ Hot, Longoria has fielded questions about the story and answered with some version of, as she tells THR, “We were never doing a movie about the history of the Cheeto.”

Adds Longoria: “For me, it is important that we know that this is Richard’s story and the most compelling thing about it is his life. And he also happened to have a hand in this billion-dollar product.”

Searchlight parent company Disney does not appear deterred by the back-and-forth, doubling down on distribution following the film’s SXSW screening. Searchlight co-presidents Greenbaum and Matthew Greenfield met with Iger and Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan Bergman asking to expand the film’s release to Disney+, making Flamin’ Hot available to a larger and more international audience. Says Greenbaum, “We talked about the broad appeal of the film, it really playing with families.”

Indeed, Flamin’ Hot is a decidedly more commercial venture than the typical Searchlight title. “Eva’s a filmmaker and an artist who’s genuinely interested in the audience. That is not always the case with filmmakers we work with,” says Greenfield. “Even some of the truly great filmmakers often will focus on their vision. Not ignoring an audience, but certainly the audience isn’t the first thing that comes [to mind for them].”

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.”

In the absence of a theatrical release, Longoria pushed for early word-of-mouth screenings across Texas, Arizona, California and elsewhere, flying out for Q&As at stops like San Antonio’s Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. “It’s something Searchlight does, [but] we just quadrupled them,” she says. “They were like, ‘Here, we have 20.’ I was like, ‘Great! We’re doing a hundred.’”

“The thing about Eva,” says Greenfield, “is that she’s reaching for the brass ring, always.”

When words like “austerity” or “cost-cutting” start getting batted around, says Longoria, some of the first projects on the chopping block are those starring or made by people of color. “[Studios] think, ‘That’s a diverse project.’ It’s in a box of its own.”

Longoria produced and directed episodes of Gordita Chronicles, the 1980s-set coming-of-age story of a young girl who moves from Santo Domingo to Miami, which was pulled off HBO Max late last year along with several other projects, including DC entry Batgirl, following the Warner Bros. Discovery merger. “I’m still unclear about why,” she says of the shelving. “We’re at the finish line. Are you kidding me? Do you know how much money was already put into developing, writing, producing, shooting, editing, marketing this show?”

Adds Longoria, “I do think with these mergers, it was just like a lot of suits making decisions, and they’re not producers, and they’re not in any of our guilds, and they don’t understand how our industry works. When you just look at bottom-line numbers or when your only metric of success is the economic output, you’re missing the point. You’re missing the rest of the picture.”

Longoria talked to THR as the WGA strike was already in its second month, the DGA was still at the negotiating table (its contract was recently ratified) and SAG-AFTRA was finalizing its asks. “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 an 18-hour day. When we do 12-hour days, I’m like, ‘When do you see your child?’ I get so anxious about my crew.”

She continues, giving a response Huerta would likely approve of: “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 labor drives that. So, if labor drives that, we need to reevaluate how we pay that labor.”

Press for Flamin’ Hot has lasted the better part of four months, during which time Longoria has talked at length about the lack of Latino representation onscreen everywhere from Austin to Mexico City to Cannes. (Much of the travel she’s been doing with her 5-year-old son Santiago, whom she is raising with husband José Bastón.) Longoria, dressed in sweats accessorized with metallic red fingernails, sat for this interview the morning of a screening at the L.A. Latino International Film Festival, which she considered her most important screening to date, given that the fest was programmed directly for the audience she was hoping to reach. And while Longoria has been using the release as a chance to call for Latino representation in Hollywood, the reality of her film being released to streaming is that the metrics the entertainment industry usually uses to measure success (box office, viewership numbers, etc.) are propriety information. After its premiere, Searchlight released a statement that Flamin’ Hot was the studio’s biggest streaming premiere but, as expected, no data was released, making it difficult to use as a comp for future projects. 

With Flamin’ Hot finally winding down, Longoria is set for a run of onscreen work. CNN recently released the Longoria-fronted travel/food series Searching for Mexico, a spinoff of Stanley Tucci’s Searching for Italy, and after that comes a Disney+ adaptation of the classic children’s book Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day and Apple miniseries Land of Women. As for directing, the strike slowdown has left Longoria with plenty of time to read; she has several projects in development but is still looking to lock down her next. But, since her feature, Longoria has noticed a shift.

“Everybody’s meeting me with this reframing of ‘director,’” she says. “I’ve had many a meeting lately with great producers or studios, and I’m like, ‘You know, I’m an actress, too.’ I still have my day job.”