Eva Longoria actually tried to defend a series she had agreed to co-produce about Latinas cast as housekeepers. But in the process, the Hispanic television star came across as, well, desperate.
The program — “Devious Maids,” which was set to debut this fall on ABC — was, if you'll excuse the expression, the brainchild of Marc Cherry. One would expect more from the creator of the hit show “Desperate Housewives,” which starred Longoria and recently wrapped up its final season.
Casting Latinas as maids isn't much of a stretch creatively. In fact, Lupe Ontiveros, a Mexican American actress from an earlier generation, estimates that she has played a maid on screen as many as 300 times.
Fortunately, ABC decided not to pick up the series.
Based on the popular Mexican telenovela “The Disorderly Maids of the Neighborhood,” it would have revolved around four women who worked as maids in Beverly Hills.
When critics sounded off, Longoria got defensive.
“They are the leads of the show, and they are playing maids, which is a realistic reflection of our society today in America,” she told the Huffington Post. “When we get any sort of backlash for — ‘Oh, they're playing the stereotypical maids' — my immediate response is, ‘So you're telling me those stories aren't worth telling, that those people are lesser than, that their stories aren't worth exploring, that they have no complexity in their life because they're a maid?'” READ MORE
Comments