Eva Longoria Says Most Painful Part of Strikes Is Not Being Able to Support “Amazing Work That Our Community Is Doing” Amid Wave of Latinx Projects

In a conversation on Wednesday, Longoria also compared the current Hollywood labor disputes to the Time’s Up movement: “There’s these great conversations happening.”

BY KIRSTEN CHUBA

Eva Longoria took part in a sit-down conversation on Wednesday with nonprofit organization 19th News, where the director and star weighed in on the ongoing writers and actors strikes.

In between reflecting on her career and the recent success of her feature directorial debut Flamin’ Hot, Longoria noted when talking to people while on the picket lines “there’s these great conversations happening. It reminded me of the Time’s Up movement, when there were so much danger for women in the workplace… There’s so many horrible stories that came out of that, but what it did was bring together this sisterhood in Hollywood and I think the industry goes, ‘Oh shit, the women are talking. The women are talking, somebody stop it,’ because we got to compare notes.”

She also noted then whenever a project is released that has “a Latinx person, writer, creator, crafty, whatever it is, I’m supporting it. And that is the most painful part of this strike, it’s like not being able to shout from the highest rooftop the amazing work that our community is doing. And so for me, I think it’s important for us to remember we’re not there yet and we have a long way to go.” Most notably, Blue Beetle, the first live-action superhero film to have a Latino lead, was released in August after the SAG-AFTRA strike had began, meaning the cast and fellow actors couldn’t promote the project.

Gloria Calderón Kellett, who also took part in a Latinx creator roundtable alongside Dani Fernandez and Linda Yvette Chávez at the 19th News event, echoed the same struggle. “That’s the hardest part of the strike for me, is not being celebrate all of the amazing movies we’d had this summer; we’ve had an incredible summer content of Latino storytelling,” she said.

Elsewhere in the conversation, Longoria also discussed how another big topic coming up amid the strikes is how the industry is set up, especially when it comes to overall deals.

“You’re on one show that now only shoots six episodes, eight episodes a year and you can’t do any other show. This is unsustainable for writers, for actors, directors. There’s not enough work to keep me off of doing other things,” she told the audience at the Culver City event. “I think our industry is not set up to service our ambition. I want to be agnostic; I want to have 85 shows, and I want to direct everything and I want to be in everything. And so people are like, ‘Right, but what’s the one thing you’re going to do?’ So why can you only do one thing? Writers, if you have an overhead deal, you get one show every three years and then you have to staff on another show. And you’re like, ‘I want to make more.’”