Eva Longoria Returns to Her Dramedy Roots in “Land of Women” (2024)

In the 12 years since she wrapped up her eight-season run as the outrageously funny Gabrielle Solis on the soapy ABC comedy-drama Desperate Housewives, Eva Longoria has acted only sporadically. During that time, she has portrayed a Latina soap star who can’t speak Spanish (on the NBC sitcom Telenovela) and the mother of Dora the Explorer (in 2019’s Dora and the Lost City of Gold), guest-starred on hit series (Empire, Brooklyn Nine-Nine), and even played fictionalized heightened versions of herself (Jane the Virgin, Devious Maids).

After Housewives, “I knew I wanted to do something different and challenging, because I do get all these scripts and offers all the time, but I was like, ‘No, I don’t want to be a detective. No, I don’t want to be a housewife again,’ ” Longoria tells Harper’s Bazaar on a recent trip to New York City.

Unsatisfied with the kinds of roles she was being offered, Longoria turned her attention to directing and producing the kinds of stories she wanted to tell. She subverted Latina stereotypes in Devious Maids; reconnected with her cultural heritage in La Guerra Civil and Searching for Mexico; and last year made her feature directorial debut with Hulu’s Flamin’ Hot, reportedly Searchlight Pictures’ most-watched streaming movie of all time.

But as she was eyeing a return to acting full time a couple of years ago, Longoria began fantasizing about shooting a new show in Spain, where she and her family live part time. She expressed that desire to her friend Ramón Campos—the co-creator of global Spanish-language hits such as Gran Hotel (which Longoria adapted into an ABC series), Velvet, and Las Chicas del Cable—who returned to her weeks later with Sandra Barneda’s best-selling novel La Tierra de las Mujeres. Or in English: Land of Women.

In Campos’s six-episode bilingual adaptation, which premiered this week on Apple TV+, Longoria plays Gala Scott, a New York socialite whose life is upended after she learns that her husband owes an exorbitant amount of money to some dangerous criminals. On the run from her (conveniently MIA) spouse’s creditors, Gala grabs teenage daughter Kate (Victoria Bazua) from boarding school and her own elderly mother, Julia (Carmen Maura), from the retirement home. The three women arrive in Julia’s hometown in northern Spain—a fictional rural area in Catalonia called La Muga, whose female-run winery powers the local economy—where long-buried family secrets threaten to unravel their fresh start.

Longoria laments that so many current shows “stress [her] out” because they are set in a “dystopian future where the government has collapsed” or there’s a “zombie apocalypse and a virus has taken over” the planet. “I just wanted escapism TV, and I wanted to go somewhere beautiful. I wanted to do blue-sky TV,” she says. Land of Women “is very much in the tone of Housewives. It’s a dramedy, and the stakes are really high—there’s somebody that wants to kill them. But I’m a fish out of water in Spain, so that’s where the rub is and the comedy comes from.”

Below, Longoria—who also serves as an executive producer and confirms Land of Women could be renewed for future seasons—opens up about the making of the matriarchal family dramedy, how her relationship with the Spanish language has evolved over time, and what she feels is still getting lost in the conversation about Latinx underrepresentation.

Your latest role is a clever twist on the role that made you famous, as well as a nod to one of Carmen Maura’s earliest collaborations with Pedro Almodóvar: a housewife on the verge of a nervous breakdown. How would you compare Gala Scott with Gabrielle Solis?

Oh, gosh, Gaby is one of the most confident people I know, and she knows what she wants. She’s the leader of her life, and Gala is the opposite of that. [Gala] is kind of just a trophy wife at home who is not economically independent, who doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life. And if she does know, she is nervous to do it. She’s very insecure and unsure of her place in the world, and she has to go on this adventure where she has to flee New York and go to a country she’s never been to, speak a language she doesn’t speak. She has to hide and protect her family; she has to provide for her family. If she wasn’t forced to do all these things, she never would’ve discovered her own strength, whereas Gaby knows she can do anything. So I think they’re extreme opposites.

In the past, you’ve said that Gaby was very strong and independent in her own right, but that she always wanted to have a man in her life. Gala is not necessarily opposed to love, but she also comes to realize that she does not need another man to realize her own power.

It was really important to me that [Gala] can’t flee one situation from a man, and the solution is another man right away. I feel like so much storytelling in Hollywood is like, “If she just found love, everything would be okay.” [Laughs.] And you’re like, “No, she has real sh*t going on! What are you talking about? She’s got to solve her problems, and she has to be her own hero.” I said, “Amat [played by Santiago Cabrera] cannot be the solution to her problems.”

I think that rubs Amat the wrong way, because he’s this man from the country, he’s a handyman and a fixer, and he wants to be needed. She doesn’t need him, and she doesn’t want to need him—and that creates this tension between them when they meet. It’s just a fight of egos. But as you dig a little deeper and they get to know each other, [they realize] they’re both very stubborn and have different agendas, but they’re very similar. But they don’t want to admit it, [because] that would be too vulnerable for both of them. I loved that whole relationship. I love the slow burn of it.

So much of the driving force in Gala’s life, especially once she finds herself in La Muga, comes from the relationships she has with her daughter and mother. What were the most important considerations that you had in mind when building the dynamics between the three generations of women on the show?

Once I found out Carmen Maura was going to be my mother, I was so excited—and then I got really nervous. She’s such a legend, and I was like, “Oh my God, I’m going to be acting opposite of her in Spanish, in comedy.” It was just a lot, and she was fantastic and super supportive and helpful [with dialogue].

What I loved about the three different relationships is that Gala is the parent to Julia, and even Kate is taking a lot of care of Julia, and Kate is parenting Gala. Kate’s like, “Mom, that’s not how the world is now. This is how things are.” So they have unconventional relationships; they’re not your typical grandma-daughter-granddaughter. I also like all the flashbacks for Julia, because she’s this crazy free spirit, and it’s so beautiful to flash back into younger Julia and see that she’s always been this free-spirited, rebellious girl. As you unpack why she left the town and why nobody’s happy to see her [in the present], I think Gala starts to look at her mother differently: “Oh my God, she had a pretty tough life and didn’t quite fit in. She sacrificed a lot for me.”

Are there any other mother-daughter relationships in movies or TV shows that you personally love? And what parts of those characters did you see in Land of Women?

I love Steel Magnolias, with Sally Field and Julia Roberts. [Field’s character, M’Lynn] wants to keep up appearances in Steel Magnolias. [With her daughter, played by Roberts,] she’s very much like, “You probably shouldn’t have a kid. It’s not best for you.” She really feels like she knows best, and I think Gala really thinks she knows what’s best for Kate, and she kind of forces that onto her, whether it’s going to this private school or “Don’t date that girlfriend.” There’s a flashback in [Land of Women] where they have dinner with her girlfriend’s parents, and [Gala] is just like, “Oh, what an uncivilized family.” Her standards of what a family should look like are very different [from] Kate’s idea of a family, so that’s where there’s a huge miscommunication about the definition of love between them. Everything is just maligned until they get on this trip, and they go, “Okay, what do we want with each other?”

You’ve spoken in interviews about how your parents didn’t speak Spanish to you growing up because they didn’t want you to be teased about speaking it in school; they wanted you to assimilate in some way. Given that you are now a fluent speaker, when did you make the conscious choice to learn Spanish on your own? How would you describe the evolution of your relationship with the language?

I never spoke Spanish growing up. I didn’t know a word of it. My grandmother spoke no English, and I could never communicate with her. I always just remember [being] like, “Oh, why didn’t my mom teach me Spanish?” And then I got married to my ex-husband [Tony Parker] who was French, and I learned French, so French was my second language. I do interviews in French; I’m fluent in French. After we got divorced, I would do interviews in English and French, and people would go, “Why don’t you do interviews in Spanish?” And I was like, “I don’t really know it …”

I was about 40 [when] I said, “You know what? I’m going to learn Spanish.” I just dedicated myself, and it took me less time than it took me to learn French, because your third language is easier than your second, and then your fourth language is easier than your third. I did a film in Italian, and that was so easy. I was like, “Oh, I could learn Italian pretty quickly.” I love languages. And then I married [media executive José Bastón], who’s Mexican, and now we live in Mexico City and Spain. So now, I think and dream in Spanish. But doing a comedy in Spanish was so hard—and [I spoke in] Castilian Spanish, which is different [from] Mexican Spanish.

How do you go about choosing what you want to act in, as opposed to produce and/or direct? When you’re wearing all those different hats, do you feel you have a particular sweet spot?

I love to direct myself and produce whatever I’m doing, so I like to produce, direct, and act in a project, like I did on Telenovela and Grand Hotel. I was a smaller character in Grand Hotel, but producing, directing, and acting—that’s my favorite space to be in. This time, I didn’t direct because I needed all my brain cells dedicated to learning Spanish and acting in Spanish. [Laughs.] It was the first time I was shooting in Spain, so I didn’t know how the crews worked, how the hours worked, how the unions worked there. But I definitely have to produce anything I’m [starring] in. I have to have a say in the writing, the casting, the editing—every aspect of it. I’m a good producer, and I add a lot of value, because I’m a director and I’m very solution-oriented. I love the whole collaboration aspect, and I’m good at it.

I think my time is my greatest asset. It’s really easy for me to say no to things; it’s hard for me to say yes. If it’s going to take me away from my family or from my son, I have to really believe in the project. I always want to do and produce with purpose, and do things that say something: What are we saying about society? What are we saying about culture? What are we saying about women? There’s so many things being made that are just … soulless. I think now after Covid and after the strikes, there’s a pivoting happening from quantity to quality and going back towards good TV—and I think [Land of Women] is one of those shows.

You’ve been outspoken about the underrepresentation of Latinos not just in Hollywood but also across all other industries, but what do you think is still getting lost in that larger conversation about diversity and inclusion for your community?

I feel like people look at Hollywood and assume we’re such a progressive industry—and we’re not. If you look at the statistics, there are less female directors with opportunity than there were a couple years ago. That McKinsey report came out: There’s less Latinos in TV and film than there were a couple years ago. We’re actually going in the wrong direction, so no, Hollywood isn’t progressive. [Latinos] are one of the biggest ticket buyers of movies; we are one of the biggest buyers of streaming services. And yet, there’s this huge disparity of who makes the content and who’s consuming the content. So with Hyphenate Media, which is the company I founded [in 2023], we’re trying to bridge that gap.

We really are severely underrepresented not just in our industry, [but] our industry sets the tone for culture. You can’t change policy without changing culture, and there’s no greater influence on culture than the media. So we have a big job to do, and we’re just going to have to keep hitting away at the rock until it cracks. I always encourage filmmakers and storytellers from my community to keep your foot on the gas. I told the Asian community this when Michelle Yeoh won Best Actress [at the Academy Awards in 2023]: Keep your foot on the gas. Don’t rely on Crazy Rich Asians, Everything Everywhere All at Once, and Michelle Yeoh [to say], “We’ve arrived. We’re done.” No, it’s just the beginning. The change happened because your foot was on the gas. Don’t let up now.

This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.