Eva Longoria wants to keep busy.
The ex-Desperate Housewives star and now-Hyphenate Media boss decried an industry obsession with talent only working across one show at a time.
“Our business is so slow,” said Longoria at Content London. “That’s the problem with the industry it’s like, ‘Wait you can only do one show’ and I’m like, ‘No you can do more things than one’.”
This notion especially applies to women, Longoria joked, who said: “If you want to get something done, then ask a busy woman.”
Hyphenate recently struck a deal with One Day at a Time co-creator Gloria Calderón Kellett, who was previously signed up with Amazon Studios. Speaking alongside each other today, the pair said Kellett being able to work across multiple projects was crucial in her signing with Hyphenate, and she has 23 projects in various stages of development.
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“[Gloria] had to beg to go out and direct this other thing that wasn’t in the Amazon silo and you shouldn’t have to do that, we should work when we want to work,” added Longoria. “I said, ‘Gloria this system is not serving you’.”
Longoria and Cris Abrego launched Banijay-backed Hyphenate last year at MIPCOM to develop and produce its own slate as well as invest in creator-led companies, with a view to helping multi-hyphenates. It has since invested in Kellett’s GloNation Studios, landing the full estate rights for the Celia Cruz Estate. Longoria has previously said she wants Hyphenate to court the “most diverse generation ever.”
Today, Longoria said she is shooting for the stars and wants to develop a pipeline of Latina auteurs. “We want to build 80 more Gloria companies and 20 more Eva Longorias,” she said. “I can’t do everything and if you look at the landscape of Latino directors there’s myself and Gloria and a couple others, but when we’re looking to do something with them they’re always taken because they’re such a diamond. So we need to build a pipeline. Gloria will mentor future showrunners, the future ‘lil Glorias’.”
Why now for ‘Desperate Housewives’?
As is often the case, Longoria, who is starring in Gurinder Chadha’s Christmas movie, was asked if a Desperate Housewives reboot is on the cards. Sadly, she did not offer much hope for fans.
“There’s no ‘why now?’ for Desperate Housewives,” she added. “I’ve talked to Marc [Cherry, Desperate Housewives creator] 1000 times and he says we fully mined those characters. We were on for a decade and there were 24 episodes a year, none of this six per year stuff.”
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