Eva Longoria said Tuesday that female directors of color don’t get as many chances as White men in Hollywood. "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," the "Desperate Housewives" alum 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.’" She added, "We don’t get a lot of at-bats.
A White male can direct a $200 million film, fail and get another one. Right?" 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." The 48-year-old said those pressures "fueled" her. "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, tells the "inspiring story of Richard Montañez, a Frito Lay janitor who helped disrupt the food industry," according to Disney+.
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