he camera loves Eva Longoria, and vice versa,
with the Texas-born actor, producer, director and activist
filling her social media feeds with a steady stream of snaps
that document her life as a Holly wood mom and mogul.
But a closer look at those Twitter and Instagram
posts, and the pop-culture media coverage that invari-
ably follows her around the world, reveals much more
than exotic locations, charity galas and celebrity friends.
Check out, for instance, the now-viral picture of
Longoria directing an episode of Grand Hotel, a mid-
season drama she’s executive producing for ABC. A few
months postpartum, she’s breastfeeding her infant son,
Santiago, while marshaling the troops for an action-
heavy scene of the nighttime soap.
“I wasn’t making a statement by breastfeeding on
set,” she says. But by sharing the candid image, “I hoped
to normalize” the blend of career and motherhood and
celebrate women every where who routinely juggle both.
The photo came on the heels of using baby Santi’s
birth announcement (and his first released photo) as
a statement about the Trump administration’s child-
separation policy at the Mexican border. “Having my
son next to me, I can’t imagine him being taken from
my arms,” she wrote to her 20 million social followers.
“Families belong together, which is why we must do
what we can to reunite them.”
“I knew there would be a lot of eyeballs on that first
picture,” she says, as her longtime makeup and hair team
prepped her for Adweek’s cover shoot in the hills above
Studio City, Calif. “I didn’t want to miss an opportunity
to do something good with it.”
Yet another case in point: Longoria held her 40th
birthday party a few years ago at Morgan’s Wonderland
in San Antonio, an amusement park designed for people
with special needs. Her 250 guests, including entertain-
ment A-listers, rode the Ferris wheel and went on scav-
enger hunts, paired with special-needs team members.
The weekend unleashed a flood of media around the
event and donations to the one-of-a-kind venue.
“I have a special-needs sister, and I wanted to bring
attention to the park,” she says. “I knew there would beLONGORIA: STYLING: CHARLENE ROXBOROUGH; HAIR: KEN PAVES; MAKEUP: ELAN BONGIORNO; THIS PAGE: DIRECTOR: COURTESY OF EVA LONGORIA12 AUGUST 26, 2019 |^ ADWEEK
®BEACON AWARD
Longoria
breastfeeding baby
Santiago on the set of
Grand Hotel.all this focus on my turning 40, so that’s how I used it.”
These highly ’grammable moments are by no means
isolated examples, according to her friend and former
talent agent at CA A, Christy Haubegger, now chief inclu-
sion officer at WarnerMedia, who dubbed Longoria “sub-
versive in the best way.”
“She’s never considered living a life that wasn’t im-
pactful,” Haubegger says. “That’s how she’ll measure
herself. Not, ‘Did I win awards?’ or ‘Did I make a lot of
money?’ But, ‘Did I have a positive impact?’ There’s her
work, and there’s her life’s work.”
Those two areas are increasingly and deliberately
overlapping these days, as Longoria, an original co-
founder of Time’s Up and longtime L’Oréal Paris spokes-
woman, cultivates her creative side (multiple projects in
the works with diverse casts and crews from production
company UnbeliEVAble), her philanthropy ($2 million in
micro loans awarded to Latinx startups, one of her nu-
merous causes) and her decades of activism (mobilizing
Latino voters, stumping for Democratic candidates and
girding for 2020). This whirlwind of activity and initia-
tives inspired Adweek to make Longoria the first recipi-
ent of our Beacon Award, which she will receive on Sept.
8 at Adcolor’s 13th annual awards event in Los Angeles.
As we went to press with this issue, she was making
news yet again with her activism. Reacting to recent ICE
raids and the El Paso mass shooting, Longoria joined
with more than 150 entertainers, business leaders and
human rights advocates in writing an open letter to the
Latino community, published in The New York Times, La
Opinion and other newspapers. “If you are feeling terri-
fied, heartbroken and defeated by the barrage of attacks
on our community, you are not alone,” it read. “But we
will not be broken. We will not be silenced. We will con-
tinue to denounce any hateful and inhumane treatment
of our community. We will demand dignity and justice.”
Longoria has a compelling reason for every pursuit.
Common threads of breaking barriers, elevating oth-
ers and giving back run between percolating and exist-
ing projects like the Macro Lab she launched with Lena
Waithe to produce TV and digital projects from diverse
writers, the modern female-led workplace comedy (24-
7) with co-star Kerry Washington that will be her feature
directorial debut and her nearly 15 years with L’Oréal.
The documentary she produced called Reversing Roe,
which debuted last year on Netflix, was just nominated
for two Emmys, and her current film as a co-star, Dora
and the Lost City of Gold, is the first live-action feature
based on the bilingual animated heroine.
“It’s so exciting to see that the first Latino superhero
is a little girl,” Longoria says. “And she’s not a cartoon.
She’s flesh and blood. All these little girls every where
will be able to look up to her.”‘Producing with purpose’
Longoria, who cut her TV teeth on soap operas, hit the main-
stream in the early 2000s with her breakout role on ABC’s
Desperate Housewives, using the stint there as her film school
and subsequently launching her own production banner.
Mark Pedowitz, president of The CW network and