As a child growing up on a ranch in South Texas, Eva Longoria seldom encountered her heroes onscreen. At home, they were ever present: her father, Enrique, an Army veteran, made the laborious task of tending the fields seem natural, while her mother, Ella, a special-education teacher, was uniquely skilled at maximizing the day—somehow managing to provide for her family, ferrying her four girls back and forth from their schools, and serving dinner at a set time. In class, Longoria learned and read about different kinds of American heroes, most of whom looked like the nation’s Founding Fathers, but bore no resemblance to her or her family. People like them rarely featured in monuments; their stories were almost always conveyed as a mere side note. This erasure, Longoria came to realize, painted an incomplete version of history—one that Hollywood could either promote or help redress.
When Longoria moved to Los Angeles, in the late nineties, she found that TV producers had a fixed idea of what Latinas should look and sound like. Longoria, whose family roots in Texas can be traced back to the seventeen-hundreds, was told that she didn’t have enough of a Spanish accent to be cast as Latina, but her skin wasn’t fair enough to pass for white. It wasn’t until “Desperate Housewives,” in 2004, that Longoria landed a leading role as a Latina, playing the former model Gaby Solis. The show, which ran for eight seasons and attracted millions of viewers, made Longoria a household name. It also led her to consider her next steps in television. What if she did more than deliver lines written by other people?
Around that time, Longoria enrolled in night classes at California State University, Northridge, where she earned a master’s in Chicano studies. If she was going to chart a path for her own people, she first needed to learn where they had come from. Works of history, such as “Occupied America,” by Rodolfo Acuña, allowed Longoria to contextualize the Mexican American experience and fully appreciate its trajectory. In front of and behind the screen, the gap between the community’s role and its representation continued to widen. Although Latinos had become the largest minority group in the country, they made up less than five per cent of hires as characters in film. It was clear to Longoria that producers and executives had unconsciously ignored the community for years; if she were to change that, she needed to join their ranks.
While “Desperate Housewives” was still airing, Longoria began to produce her own shows. As her repertoire grew—encompassing series, short films, and documentaries—she became a subject of scrutiny. When “Devious Maids” premièred, in 2013, critics questioned why Longoria, who produced the show and directed some of its episodes, had settled for an old trope. “The stereotype we are grappling with here is that as Latinas, all we are is maids,” she said, in response. “I take pride in the fact that these characters are not one-dimensional or limited to their job title.” Her body of work, which covered everything from child labor to reproductive justice, wouldn’t limit itself to a single theme, either.
Over time, Longoria understood that an “illusion of progress” pervaded Hollywood. The studios liked to tout themselves as advocates for diversity, but the numbers were telling a different story. Between 2007 and 2019, the U.S.C. Annenberg Inclusion Initiative found that the percentage of Latinos onscreen did not change. Studios seemed mostly oblivious of the fact that Latinos represented more than a fourth of moviegoers in the country, bringing in millions of dollars each year. Series about and by Latinos were often the first to be called off. But, to Longoria, these were all reasons to press ahead, to cast a greater number of Latinos and defy long-standing prejudices. If Latinos could see themselves reflected onscreen—if other audiences were shown a different but truer narrative of the community—American culture would, at last, honor their life experience and role in society.
When a script of “Flamin’ Hot” landed on Longoria’s desk, she was moved to tears. In her hands was a story of love, prowess, and redemption which she had never once heard about yet could relate to. The plot was about a man named Richard Montañez, a former janitor at Frito-Lay, who, in the nineteen-nineties, pitches a simple idea to the ailing company he works for: with a little bit of spice, they could offer a product tailored for Latinos and tap into a long-ignored market. Longoria was less interested in Montañez’s claim that he was the mind behind Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, which the company disputes, than she was in the arc of his life. Here was a man who had gone from hustling in the streets of East Los Angeles to reaching the highest ranks at Frito-Lay—a man whose story proved that opportunities were attainable, even though they weren’t always equally distributed.
Searchlight Pictures had already set its eyes on the story, so Longoria had to convince them that she was the best person who could tell it. Once she got the director’s job, she began building her own pipeline of talent. She wanted to hire Federico Cantini, an Argentinean cinematographer who had developed a reputation working on shorts. When Searchlight argued that Cantini had never made a movie the size of “Flamin’ Hot,” Longoria countered that neither had she. Together, they would overcome a problem Longoria viewed as circular: “You can’t get the job if you don’t have the body of work, but you can’t get the body of work without the job.” Almost everyone involved in bringing Montañez’s story to life was Latino—the project felt intimate enough that the designers overseeing the production used their own family albums as references.
The result is a film with an uncompromising sense of purpose. One that enables viewers not only to see themselves in Montañez but to rethink their understanding of the possible. The dialogue’s rhythm—its irresistible wit and Mexican candor—brings the spirit of the Latino community alive. In Jesse Garcia and Annie Gonzalez, who play the Montañezes, viewers will recognize the singular pride, warmth, and resolve with which Latinos carry themselves in this country, leaving a long-lasting mark behind.
While Longoria was promoting the film in Cannes, we talked about her role as a director and a preëminent voice in Hollywood today. The first episode of “Searching for Mexico,” her new CNN series, aired in March, just days after “Flamin’ Hot,” which is now available for streaming, premièred at South by Southwest. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
I want to start with a question about identity, which is a theme in both “Flamin’ Hot” and “Searching for Mexico.” You grew up on a ranch near Corpus Christi, and your ancestors settled in Texas centuries ago, when it still belonged to Mexico. Today, you identify as a hundred-per-cent Mexican and a hundred-per-cent American. Have you always felt this way?
No, I always felt Texan. And, growing up in South Texas, there’s such a huge Hispanic community, so I always thought we were all Hispanic. And it wasn’t until I went to a gifted-and-talented school that was not in my neighborhood that I heard somebody call me a Mexican. And I was, like, “What’s that?” And I remember getting on a bus, I had a bean taco because that’s what I ate every day—I still eat that every day for breakfast—and everybody on the bus had a Pop-Tart. And I was, like, “Oh, my God, what is that?” And they were, like, “What is that?” And I was, like, “A bean taco!” Then I remember somebody on the bus going, “She’s Mexican.” And I was, like, “What’s that?” I had no idea because I was eight, nine years old, so my whole life I just assumed everybody ate menudo and everybody listened to mariachi.
Then, later in life—I didn’t grow up speaking Spanish—going to Mexico and all of them going, “Oh, you’re the American,” “Mira la gringa,” “Ahí está la gringa.” And I was, like, “No, I’m Mexican.” And they’re, like, “No, you’re not. You’re American.” And I was, like, “I mean, yes, but.” And, all of a sudden, I was, like, “Wait, oh, so I’m both,” and it wasn’t really until college that I navigated that identity, straddling the hyphen of being both.
You’ve talked about the fact that, going into this film, and throughout the production, you felt the weight of your community—the Latino community. Translate that feeling into words for me.
