‘I literally slept with everybody on the street’: Eva Longoria’s Desperate Housewives confession

It was the role that made her famous. Now, Eva Longoria reveals why she won’t watch Desperate Housewives in front of her son.

Eva Longoria says she would be the first to sign up for a Desperate Housewives reboot. Picture: AP

Eva Longoria is strutting into her 50s with the belief that the best is yet to come.

“I am so excited about it,” the actor enthuses to Stellar of turning 50 in March, when she marked her milestone with a star-studded three-day fun festival in Miami.

“I love my 50-year-old mind! I love my 50-year-old body. I’m excited for the second half of my life.”

Longoria has a lot to be excited about. Like her peers Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman, in recent years she has purposefully been leveraging her fame to champion the stories that she is passionate about: executive producing the Apple TV+ series Land of Women and directing her first feature film, Flamin’ Hot.

Picture: Getty Images

Eva Longoria at the LA premiere of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Road Trip in Los Angeles last month. Picture: Getty Images

“It was really an uphill battle to get that made because we don’t get a lot of bio pics from our community,” she says of the latter, an underdog story about the real-life Mexican-American businessman (played by Jesse Garcia) who invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos while working as a janitor.

“That movie was like a heavy lift. Jesse had to carry that biopic on his back every day and [in] every scene, and the stakes were high. We had to get it right.”

Now Longoria has reunited with Garcia (this time as co-stars) in the new family movie Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Road Trip.

Like the 2014 film starring Jennifer Garner, the Disney+ film is loosely based on the popular book by Judith Viorst. Only this time it puts a multi-generational Latino family in the driver’s seat for a road trip plagued by bad luck.

‘Representation is always a challenge for women.’ Picture: Getty Images

“We were talking to [Alexander co-star] Cheech Marin, who’s an icon in our community [thanks to his comedy double act Cheech and Chong]. Growing up we only had him,” Longoria says of her childhood in Texas as the fourth daughter of parents who were of Mexican descent.

“Representation is always a challenge for women and for people of colour. For a lot of people, and a lot of reasons.

“But now we’re really programming for a global, diverse audience. And I think platforms like Disney and others are recognising that we’ve got to make films and TV for everybody and from different perspectives.”

Now that the film is finally streaming, Longoria looks forward to cuddling up on the couch with her six-year-old son Santiago to watch it.

She’s less enthused about him one day seeing her most famous performance as spoiled Gabrielle Solis on Desperate Housewives.

Eva Longoria is ‘super proud’ of Desperate Housewives – and the show’s legacy. Picture: Getty Images

“I mean, I literally slept with everybody on the street,” she notes with a laugh of her character’s famed bedroom antics before making a surprising admission: “My husband [businessman Jose Baston] has never seen it either.”

And yet, Longoria is “super proud” of the hit series’ legacy, noting that its popularity helped pave the way for more female-led dramas.

Having previously worked predominantly in daytime soaps, Longoria didn’t realise she had a mega-hit on her hands when she first read Marc Cherry’s script.

With nothing comparable on prime time at the time, Longoria recalls that, “I only knew it was super special because it was odd. It was the first time I had read a dramedy, so I didn’t get it.”

Eva Longoria, right, is close friends with Victoria Beckham. Picture: AP

Eva Longoria, right, with her husband, Jose Baston. Picture: Getty Images

Despite her confusion about its unique tone, she pursued it, anyway. “I was so young in my career that I just was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll sign up’, and then [was stunned] to see the global impact that it had.”

The overnight popularity of the prime-time series created huge hype around Longoria and her co-stars Marcia Cross, Felicity Huffman and Teri Hatcher.

While her three co-stars had all weathered the spotlight to varying degrees, the sudden attention was a shock to the system for the less experienced Longoria.

Not long after the show debuted in 2004, she travelled to London – and found herself confused when she was greeted by a queue of people outside her hotel.

When she questioned the staff as to who the crowd was waiting for, Longoria was gobsmacked to learn the assembled fans were hers.

“I said: ‘Is Bono here?’,” she recalls. And they said: ‘No, they are here for you, that’s why they are out there’. I couldn’t believe they would even know me, because I’d never been to London. And that [realisation of the global reach of the show] was really weird and great at the same time.”

Longoria has such fond memories of making the series that she tells Stellar: “I would be the first person” to sign on for a reboot.

“Whether it ever comes to life or not, though, she never tires of talking about her residency on Wisteria Lane.

“I love that when I’m anywhere in the world, people go: ‘Gabby!’” I actually take a lot of pride in that.

“To me, it is just reflective of the impact it had.”

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Road Trip is streaming now on Disney+.

Read the full interview with Eva Longoria in Stellar tomorrow. For more from Stellar, click here.

Originally published as ‘I literally slept with everybody on the street’: Eva Longoria’s Desperate Housewives confession