INTERVIEW
Twenty years after Desperate Housewives made Eva Longoria a household name, the actor is back on the small screen. And, the L’Oréal Paris g lobal ambassador tells Federica Volpe, her best is yet to come…
WHEN YOU MEET EVA Longoria, her drive is palpable. You get the sense she is very good at making things happen. Take, for example, how she manifested her latest on-screen project, Land Of Women, a six-part series for Apple TV+ starting this month. ‘I was a big fan of Ramon Campos, the creator,’ she says. ‘I told him I wanted to work in Spain and asked him to write me a show set in wine country. I told him a wish list of what I was looking for in a show and he came up with Land Of Women. Apple bought it straight away and we went into production.’
Longoria stars as a New York emptynester forced to flee to a wine town in Spain, along with her mother and grownup daughter, after her husband is implicated in some shady dealings. Land Of Women is the first project from Longoria’s new venture Hyphenate Media Group, and she is an exec-producer on the show.
‘I like producing with purpose,’ she says. ‘I want to tell stories for my Latine community. We have a lot of heroes, things to say, an amazing talent pool of storytellers. It’s refreshing and innovative – in an industry that keeps going to the same writers and creators for the same stories – to have a different perspective and point of view, because it changes everything, makes it more interesting, more relevant.’
Land Of Women follows Longoria’s feature film directorial debut, Flamin’ Hot, the rags-to-riches true story of Richard Montanez, the man who invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. ‘It was a very aggressive, ambitious schedule and project; it was really my TV experience, its shooting pace and rhythm, that helped me get this movie done.’
This year marks 20 years since Desperate Housewives first hit our screens, turning Longoria into a household name thanks to her genius comedic performance as the inimitable Gaby Solis. It inspired a whole genre of glossy thriller-in-suburbia dramas, yet, after eight seasons, it is still the longest running hour-long scripted series to have all-female leads.
‘You know, people think Hollywood is a liberal, progressive industry, but it’s not,’ says Longoria. ‘It would be great to have gender equity in all positions, we just don’t. We have fewer female directors and fewer Latinos in front of the ca
