Eva Longoria called Hollywood out this week for not being “progressive” towards women and people of color.
“You know, people think Hollywood is a liberal, progressive industry, but it’s not,” the 49-year-old “Desperate Housewives” alum told Grazia magazine in a piece published on Monday. “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 camera than we did a couple of years ago. So, we’re actually going in the wrong direction, even though the perception is that we’re doing so great.”
Since “Desperate Housewives” ended in 2012, Longoria has mainly been behind the camera as a producer, and she made her feature directorial debut last year with “Flamin’ Hot.”
“Women are still not getting the same opportunities as our male counterparts,” Longoria told Grazia. “What we do [in the industry] matters, it can change culture and, when you change culture, you can change policy, perception. You can change a lot of things with storytelling.”
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Longoria will soon be back in front of the camera with the six-part series “Land of Women” from her new Hyphenate Media Group.
“I like producing with purpose,” she told the outlet. “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.”
Of the show, Longoria said she told creator Roman Campos, “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.”
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Fox News Digital reached out to Longoria’s representatives for further comment.
The actress, who is an advocate for women and Latinos, made the same point while promoting “Flamin’ Hot” at Cannes in 2023.
“I felt the weight of my community, I felt the weight of every female director because we don’t get a lot of bites at the apple,” she told reporters at the time.
“We can’t get a movie every 20 years,” she said. “So the problem is if this movie fails, people go, ‘Oh, Latino stories don’t work.’ ‘Oh, female directors really don’t cut it.’”
She added, “We don’t get a lot of at-bats. A White male can direct a $200 million film, fail and get another one. Right?”
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The former “The Young and the Restless” star said she felt like going into filming “Flamin’ Hot,” “We get one at-bat. We get one chance. I gotta make it right, I gotta do it well, I gotta work twice as hard, I gotta out hustle everybody in the room, I gotta work twice as fast, I gotta do it twice as cheap … You really carry the generational traumas with you into the making of the film.”
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She said those pressures “fueled” her. “I was just like determined and excited for the journey and we have a beautiful film.”
During her appearance at Cannes, Longoria said Latinos are still underrepresented in front of and behind the camera and “we’re still not tapping into the females in the Latino community.”
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Longoria added, “So the myth that Hollywood is so progressive is a myth when you look at the data,” saying there is an “illusion” of “equity” in the industry. “I mean, yes, we had some wins but like no, we still have so much more to go.”
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