Eva Longoria burst onto the scene as a desperate housewife in the early 2000s, but the Corpus Christi–born multihyphenate entertainer has since evolved into a bona fide renaissance woman: a producer, director, writer, model, spokesperson, restaurateur, entrepreneur, and philanthropist, among many other ventures. 

These days, with her new women-owned and -run tequila brand, Casa Del Sol, and her directorial debut movie, Flamin' Hot, which premiered at South by Southwest in March and will be available on Hulu and Disney+ starting June 9, Longoria is busier than ever. Thankfully, the Texas native had time to catch up with us (no easy feat) to chat about what she's up to now. 

How does it feel to be back in Texas? How often do you come home?

I’m actually home a lot in San Antonio and we’ve been in Texas a lot lately— Houston, Dallas, to San Antonio—for the tequila. I have a house in San Antonio, and I’m not usually in Houston, but one of my greatest memories growing up is going to Ninfa’s. We used to come to Houston just to eat at Ninfa’s, and we would also go to Astroworld.

Do you have a favorite cuisine or dish you like to get when visiting ?

Tex-Mex of course. But it’s always a big toss-up between Tex-Mex and Whataburger.

Have your Latin roots paved the way for where you are today? How do you try to stay connected?

It’s not hard for me. It’s my identity, and my identity is Mexican American. It’s in everything I do, everything I eat, everything I cook, in our language, and in our traditions, and I have a really strong family as well. I’m always with my family and they’re pretty grounding for me.

How did you come to be the cofounder of a liquor brand?

I’ve been approached for 20 years to do a tequila, and I never really wanted to and felt like just putting my name on something was not what I wanted to do. And then, Casa Del Sol approached me, and it was a brand with a lot of women behind it. Our master distiller is a woman, our VP of operations is a woman, our president is a woman, our CEO is a woman. To have so many key positions in a male-dominated industry was impressive, especially considering the No. 1 consumer of tequila is women. I thought, “We should be making this.” It was the first tequila to approach me that was very Mexican forward.

What makes it different from other tequila brands?

So many of these brands are not Mexican, and they don’t have a Mexican-owned distillery either. It’s probably made in Mexico, but it’s not made by Mexicans. Even our logo on the bottle is the Aztec goddess of Mayahuel, the goddess of agave. In Mexico her mural is everywhere, but nobody’s ever used her, and she invented tequila. So we put her front and center on all of our bottles.

How did you end up doing the show Searching for Mexico?

I was doing the tequila, and I fell in love with the region of Jalisco, and then they approached me to do the show. We did six other regions, and it was all so beautiful.

What are your goals for 2023? 

I directed Flamin' Hot, which premiered this year at South by Southwest. It’s a beautiful story for our culture. We don’t have heroes, and Hollywood always gets to define what heroes look like. So when I got this story, I was like, “This is what a hero looks like to me, this Mexican janitor.”

This conversation has been edited for flow and clarity.