Eva Longoria is not holding back. The actress screened her directorial debut at Cannes Film Festival 2023 recently and spoke candidly that how opportunities are less in Hollywood for female directors- especially the non-white ones.
"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," Longoria said at Cannes of her feature directorial debut Flamin’ Hot during the Kering Women in Motion talk.
Longoria, who has directed episodes of Black-ish and Jane the Virgin, said she realized the last Latina-directed studio film was 20 years ago.
"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.’"
"We don’t get a lot of at-bats. A White male can direct a $200 million film, fail and get another one. Right?" said the actress.
She 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."
Longoria stated that the pressures helped her to work. "I was just like determined and excited for the journey and we have a beautiful film," she said.
Flamin' Hot, which is based on a 2013 memoir and narrates the "inspiring story of Richard Montañez, a Frito Lay janitor who helped disrupt the food industry," according to Disney+.
The film stars Jesse Garcia, Tony Shalhoub, Dennis Haysbert, Emilio Rivera and Annie Gonzalez.
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