Twenty years ago, in the fall of 2004, Eva Longoria stepped into the Jimmy Choo shoes of Gabrielle Solis, a glamorous former New York City model who married a wealthy businessman and moved to the suburbs, where she had a scandalous affair with her teenaged gardener (played by Jesse Metcalfe) on ABC’s hit prime-time drama Desperate Housewives.
The role turned Longoria—who, up until then, had mostly been known for the daytime soap opera The Young and the Restless—into an instant A-list star, posing for the covers of prestigious magazines (including Vanity Fair), hosting Saturday Night Live and earning her a Golden Globe nomination. Longoria portrayed the now iconic “Gaby” for eight seasons and a whopping 180 episodes from 2004-2012. While she was becoming a household name to the show’s millions of fans around the world, Longoria was spending her time on Wisteria Lane doing what she does best: multitasking.
Longoria says she’s always been a director who “fell into acting.” She spent nearly 10 years on the Los Angeles set of Desperate Housewives—which premiered to an audience of over 21 million. Longoria wisely used that time to learn everything she could about directing, producing and working behind the camera. When the show came to an end in 2012, Longoria says, “That’s really when I started to get more and more behind the camera.”
Produce with a purpose
Longoria, a L’Oréal Paris ambassador who’s been named to PEOPLE magazine’s “50 Most Beautiful” list multiple times, traded in endless blowouts and “tiring” hours sitting in a makeup chair for a life that allowed her to roll out of bed and go to work in sweatpants behind the scenes. In 2013, less than a year after the show wrapped, Longoria reteamed with her Desperate Housewives boss, creator Marc Cherry, on the dramatic comedy Devious Maids. The prime-time TV show, which ran on Lifetime for four seasons, was the first to have an all-Latina lead cast. Although Longoria could’ve easily played any of the roles on the show, she opted instead to work behind the scenes as an executive producer on the series. By 2015, she was executive producing and starring in another comedy, Telenovela (NBC), a show she created that also featured a mostly Latino cast.
“When I created Telenovela, I was walking on the set with my friend Shaun Cassidy, who’s a big showrunner, and I was looking at all the people building the sets and Shaun goes, ‘Isn’t it crazy that you had an idea and now 300 people have a job?’ That’s the best part of [producing]. Filmmaking is such a collaborative process. You have to work with so many people, and I love it,” Longoria says.
The role of producer—someone who could develop projects and give opportunities to talented individuals, especially in her own community—fits the type A Longoria like a glove. “I produce with purpose,” explains Longoria, who’s worked with the American Latino Media Arts Awards (ALMA) for several years.
“With the ALMA Awards, I knew I could amplify all the talent we had in our community and celebrate it and applaud it but also [say], ‘Look, there’s not one well you have to tap into—we have all of this talent,’” she says. “I’ve always been a multiplier. I know there’s only one of me—I want more of those multihyphenates.”
Although Longoria was still acting after Desperate Housewives (including recurring roles on hit FOX shows like Empire and Brooklyn Nine-Nine and a starring role opposite Eugenio Derbez and Anna Faris in the big screen comedy Overboard), she seemed to be more focused on laying the foundation for a new career behind the camera. She would spend the rest of the decade building her resume as a director on hit TV shows: Devious Maids (2014); Jane the Virgin (2016); black-ish (2017-2019) and The Expanding Universe of Ashley Garcia (2020), followed by Gordita Chronicles (2022), which she also executive produced.
“I touched every rung of the ladder: short films, documentaries, TV episodics, half-hour, one-hour, multicam, single-cam, little pilots, big pilots,” Longoria says.
‘Flamin’ Hot’ directorial debut
Then, in 2023, Longoria finally made her feature directorial debut with Flamin’ Hot, a biopic based on the true story of Mexican-American Richard Montañez, a Frito-Lay janitor who helped disrupt the food industry by channeling his Mexican heritage to turn Frito-Lay snacks into an iconic global pop culture phenomenon. The film premiered at SXSW in March 2023, where it won the Audience Award, and shortly after, it became Searchlight Pictures’ most-watched streaming motion picture of all time when it premiered simultaneously on Disney+ and Hulu.
Longoria won several Best Director awards for the film and Flamin’ Hot received an Oscar nomination for Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (for the original song “The Fire Inside” written by Diane Warren and performed by Becky G). But for Longoria, what really mattered was the Latino community’s response to the film.
“The love we received from our community…, that, to me, is who really mattered because I made it for them,” Longoria says. “The fact that it was a commercial success was the icing on top, but I really wanted to show my community a hero who looked like them. And somebody they could say, ‘Wow, if that guy did that, imagine what I can do?’”
Longoria made sure to stay true to her mission of “producing with purpose” while making Flamin’ Hot. In fact, she didn’t just make a unique movie for her community, but she also made the movie with her community. The self-described “multiplier” made sure to put the talented Latinos she knew to work. “I was obsessed with Richard’s story and so obsessed with packing this movie with [Latino] talent not only in front of the camera but [also] behind the camera,” Longoria says. “Every department head was Latino.”
Given how rarely Latinas get to direct studio films—and how rare it is for a story like Flamin’ Hot to get told in Hollywood—Longoria says her cast and crew knew they had something to prove. “Everybody knew how important it was for us to get it right,” she says.
For the lead role of Montañez, Longoria championed Mexican-American character actor Jesse Garcia. “We don’t get roles like this,” she says. “We don’t get a lot of bites at the apple—playing three different decades [where] you have to be funny; you have to be charming; you have to be scary, dangerous, tough, witty. There’s so many gears he had to have to play this character, and he knocked it out of the park!” Longoria says. “People were surprised [about] that. I was never surprised that he could do it. Never.”
You better figure that out
Longoria’s resourcefulness, efficiency and tremendous success as a Hollywood multihyphenate isn’t surprising considering how she was raised. Growing up in Corpus Christi, Texas, Longoria’s mother, Ella Eva Mireles, a special education teacher, had a response at the ready whenever the young Longoria wanted something as a child. “Anytime I came to my mom with a problem, she’s like, ‘You better figure that out,’” Longoria says. “And we had to. It was like, ‘Mom, I want to be a cheerleader.’ She’s like, ‘That’s expensive; you better figure that out…. That’s not my problem; that’s a you problem.’ ‘I’m hungry.’ ‘You better figure it out.’”
Longoria grew up “middle to lower class” in a well-educated family that had high standards and stressed the importance of getting a good education.
“They expected me to be successful,” Longoria says. “Whether I was a dentist or a lawyer, they were like, ‘You’re going to do well in whatever you choose to do.’ … They raised me to know that I would be a successful, independent, intelligent adult, and that was a gift because everybody in my family was that. They all went to college. They all were educated. They were all independent—especially the women.”
But Longoria—who holds a master’s in Chicano studies and political science—has long been aware that not everyone has the same access to educational opportunities.
In 2012, she started the Eva Longoria Foundation to help Latinas build better futures for themselves and their families through education and entrepreneurship.
“I want every Latina to reach [her] full potential,” explains Longoria, whose foundation has helped more than 10,000 Latinas combined between all of its programs.
“We are the fastest-growing demographic in the United States, so in turn, that makes us the future workforce,” Longoria says. “I want to make sure that our community is ready for those jobs and ready for that opportunity.”
One of the areas the foundation has focused on is Latinas in STEM. Despite Hispanics making up 17% of the total workforce, only about 3% of Latinas work in STEM—the reason for which Longoria says is complicated.
“There are so many reasons, from socioeconomic status to their ZIP code to food insecurity, but I didn’t focus on the barriers because we already know the barriers,” Longoria says. “I focused on, ‘What do successful Latinas have in common?’ [We] found a lot of them have an engaged parent in their schooling. They had after-school programs; they took a robotics class in the second grade. We really modeled all of our programs on things that we know work.”
Establishing ‘Eva’s Heroes’
Longoria comes from a family of women, including three sisters and nine aunts. When she realized that one of her sisters, who has special needs, needed help, she started Eva’s Heroes. The San Antonio nonprofit, established in 2006, “is dedicated to enriching the lives of individuals with intellectual special needs ages 14 and older,” according to the organization’s mission. They achieve this by integrating participants into their communities through activities, dances, field trips, classes and a summer enrichment program.
“My sister turned a certain age as an adult with special needs, and there was nothing for her once you get out of a school system,” Longoria says. “There was a huge white space for the adult community with special needs, and I just go, ‘Well, if my sister needs this, many others must need it.’ So many families now depend on it. It’s one of the things I’m probably most proud of.”
As a result of Longoria’s philanthropy and her longtime advocacy for the advancement of the Latino community, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his fiancée, Lauren Sánchez, announced in March that they would be honoring Longoria with the Courage and Civility Award—the billionaire’s annual prize to individuals who make significant contributions to society. As part of the award, Bezos will grant Longoria $50 million dollars to help those in need.
“We’re very specific about what we’re going to do with that money, and the reason he gave it to me is because of the work that we’ve been doing over the last 10 years,” says Longoria, who says the money will go toward expanding the Eva Longoria Foundation’s work. “We’re going to continue to expand the work of helping Latinas through educational programs, civic engagement programs, culturally specific programs—really making sure we reach our full potential.”
A true multihyphenate
Longoria may be passionate about directing these days, but that doesn’t mean you won’t be seeing her back in front of the camera—and soon. “This year, I’m only in front of the camera,” says Longoria, who recently appeared in a recurring role on the new season of the hit murder-mystery comedy Only Murders in the Building and wrapped filming on a slew of projects, including The Pickup with Eddie Murphy; the holiday comedy Oh. What. Fun. with Jason Schwartzman; and the CNN Original Series Searching for Spain, which follows her on a gastronomic pilgrimage across the rich tapestry of Spanish cuisine. This past summer, she also starred in the Apple TV+ series Land of Women, which she also executive produced.
“This year has been about acting and being back in front of the camera while I read what I’m going to [direct] next. I haven’t had the same spark that I had with Flamin’ Hot, so I’m not in a rush to go back and direct. I love directing, but I want something to speak to me and say something.” In other words: producing with purpose.
Longoria also announced in late 2023 that she was teaming up with veteran unscripted producer, Cris Abrego (The Surreal Life, Flavor of Love) to launch a new company called Hyphenate Media Group, which will be part production company, part talent scouting agency and part business incubator. Longoria will serve as the company’s cofounder and chief creative officer.
“The reason we started Hyphenate and named it ‘Hyphenate’ is because, not only am I a hyphenate of being Mexican-American and straddling that hyphen of identity, but I’m a multihyphenate of actor, director and producer, and there are so many of us that are these hyphenates,” Longoria explains. “This industry wants you to stay in your lane, and so we’re [like], ‘No, I can be an entrepreneur and a good actress. I can direct and produce and act. Being a hyphenate is almost necessary now.”
Abrego, who serves as cofounder and CEO of Hyphenate, explains what makes Eva the ultimate multihyphenate. “She knows instinctually where to focus her time and attention. She does so many things well because she approaches each of her endeavors—her directing, her producing, her activism, her business—with a clear sense of purpose and a commitment to excellence” he says. “I’ve known her for two decades, and I am always impressed by her ability to cut through the noise and focus on what really matters to get the job done.”
This article originally appeared in the November/December 2024 issue of SUCCESS magazine.
Photography by Brian Bowen Smith
