Eva Longoria Talks Magnum P.I., Wrapping Up ‘Devious Maids’ [EXCLUSIVE]

Eva Longoria is a lot more than a beautiful Latina you can see on TV. She’s an entrepreneur, producer, director, and designer that you’ll see represented in the credits of many of your favorite shows, behind the camera, in your closet with her new collection from The Limited, and now even in your bathroom. Longoria spoke to Variety Latino at the launch of her bath collection with JC Penny. The bath collection is an extension of her already popular bedding line with the retailer that launched last year.

As Longoria relaxed on a bed she made with longtime hairstylist and friend Ken Paves, she dished about her newest project Magnum P.I. as well as her plans to wrap up the cliffhanger from the recently canceled series Devious Maids.

“I got the rights to Magnum P.I. because I was such a fan of it growing up,” Longoria told Variety Latino. “I thought, ‘I want to do Magnum P.I., keep the coolness, keep the nostalgia, but with a woman. At the end of the Magnum P.I. series, he had a daughter. So that’s where we’re going to continue. It’s the sequel of Magnum P.I., a continuation of that story. We’re very excited about it. It has a lot of built-in fans.”

When asked whether or not she already had an actress in mind for the role she said, “No, it’s gonna be tough because she has to be biracial because that’s who she was in the original series. We have to find a talented actress who fits the part of what was in the original. So we’re kind of reverse engineering.”

Adding, “She could be a Latina. I would love it. I create a lot of my TV shows for that reason. I want to give a lot of Latinos opportunities to be on screen, behind-the-scenes, writers, directors, and producers. I love creating those opportunities. That’s the greatest thing about being a producer, you’re a job creator.”

Speaking of talented Latinas, Longoria recently directed an episode of Jane the Virgin starring someone she’s long admired, Gina Rodriguez.

“I’m directing Jane the Virgin and it’s been so much fun, she said excitedly. “Jaime [Camil] and I have been friends for 15 years so we’ve known each other forever. I’m such a big fan of Gina’s and I love that show because she’s so good in it. I kept saying, ‘I love that show. She just pops off the screen. She’s such a good actress.’ So they asked me to direct last year and I couldn’t because I was doing Telenovela and then this year they asked me again and I said, ‘absolutely.’

You get the scripts there like the day before, so when I got my script I was like, ‘Gloria [Estefan] and Emilio [Estefan] are in this? Oh my God, that’s so cool!’ I’ve known them forever too. I was surprised that Judy Reyes was also in my episode because she was on Devious Maids. Then I saw that Diane Guerrero was also in it. Everyone was on my episode so it was so much fun to work with all my friends and to go to work every day with that crew.

By the way, the crew— camera, grips, lighting, the [director of photography], all are from Desperate Housewives. They’re all the people I spent a decade of my life with on Desperate Housewives. So with this crew, it was like I was coming home.”

Did somebody say, Devious Maids? The show was cancelled by Lifetime network earlier this year and fans have been in a frenzy asking for the resolution of many storylines that were left up in the air. So is anything in the works?

“I don’t know right now,” she said. “We’re still in talks about what to do next. Four seasons is a huge success. We’re very very happy with the girls and just how well we did for so many years. It’s such a fan favorite, so I’m getting this question a lot. We always made every season finale a cliffhanger on purpose. Then when we found out we weren’t coming back we’re like ‘ahhh! How do we wrap this up?’ We didn’t wrap it up. So we’ll see.”