Eva Longoria Talks About Her Return to TV in NBC’s Flashy Comedy Telenovela

Desperate Housewives alum Eva Longoria returns to series TV in Telenovela, a fun, irreverent look at the cast and crew of a popular Spanish telenovela. Longoria plays the very self-involved Ana Sofia, the star of a popular Spanish-language soap opera, who is keeping a secret: She doesn’t speak Spanish.

“You’re going to fall in love with Ana,” Longoria tells Parade.com. “She’s actually self‑involved in an insecure way. She doesn’t mean to be. She just feels like she is not worthy enough. As you can tell, she doesn’t speak Spanish. So she’s always one foot in, one foot out of this culture, which is really my life story.”

In addition to starring in Telenovela, Longoria is an executive producer on the show. Working behind the scenes on shows like Devious Maids and Ready for Love as both a producer and director has been her focus since Desperate Housewives wrapped in 2012.

“I hadn’t acted in comedy for a while, so I did Brooklyn Nine-Nine to dip my toe back in the water,” she says. “Oh my God, those 5 a.m. call times! I’m like, ‘Do I really want to go back? Oh, my God, I’m enjoying this so much.’ So that was a little tough, but that’s a conditioning thing. I was always up for Housewives at 5:30, 6 a.m., and then to not do it for three years, and have to do it again…”

Telenovela previewed in December, but it moves into its regular time slot on Monday, January 4 at 8:30 p.m. on NBC. Before tuning in, check out the rest of Longoria’s interview in which she talks about how her time on The Young and the Restless plays into Telenovela, why the appeal of the show is universal, upcoming guest stars and more.

Does your experience from Young and the Restless play into Telenovela?

Very much so. More so than Housewives, because this is behind the scenes of a soap opera, and the speed at which Young and the Restless moves, or daytime soaps move, and the amount of characters you have on a soap opera … I mean, there were 40 characters on Young and the Restless, and everybody’s gorgeous, and hot, and you have the older one, and then you have the young ingénue, and so, Telenovela is very similar and based in that.

In the past you’ve talked about wanting to create your own opportunities, and then you also earned your masters in Chicano studies during your break. So was Telenovela a way to combine those two things?

Oh, wow! Yes, in the sense of I’m Mexican American, so sometimes people say, “Oh, I’m 50 percent Mexican; I’m 50 percent American,” but I’m actually 100 percent Mexican and 100 percent American at all times. So it is a marriage of my values and beliefs that there have been communities that have long been ignored for talent, and the Latino community is one of them. So being an actor-producer-director, I just decided to use that to really dig in and create stories that are fun. They’re not Latino stories. This is not a Latino comedy, this is a comedy that has universal themes of family and friendship and love and workplace. And it’s really funny. I don’t set out to do Latino content, but I have tapped into something that I think reflects the changing landscape of America.

Do you expect to have a larger Latino portion of the audience than the average show?

I hope that Latinos show up, because we do have a show that is about a telenovela. But I think many, many different groups are going to be entertained and identify with one of these characters. We are a workplace comedy. So you’re going to identify with Ana Sofia as a woman, you’re going to identify with her if you’re a vulnerable person, if you’re an insecure person.

There are a lot of people that you’re going to be able to identify with, not because they’re Latino, but because they’re human beings dealing with different things in their lives. We deal with it through the comedic lens, but they’re still universal issues.

Why did you want to do a comedy now?

I left Housewives four years ago, and I focused completely on my foundation and my charity work. I was traveling the world. And then I was directing and producing Devious Maids and other projects. And I knew I wanted to return to television, because television is my favorite medium of content. Television is at its best right now. And I knew I would be back and do a comedy, because I had so much fun on Housewives. I hit the lottery with Housewives. It was the best show in the last decade. Then I had this idea for this show. I never thought I would star in it, I just wanted to develop this idea.

The other thing is, I knew if I was going back to comedy, I wanted to move the ball forward. You know, cable has really put pressure on dramas, but that pressure doesn’t translate to comedies. I thought, “Comedies are comedies. There’s nothing new.” You know, the voice over was a certain device, and then there was the mockumentary of The Office and Modern Family, and that was a certain device. So what’s the next new, fresh thing in comedy? And I thought this world. This is a world we haven’t seen in television before. And that’s what I knew I wanted to do when I went back to television.

Ana Sofia is very self‑involved. Are we going to find things that we really like about her? 

She’s in this great big world being a Latin star, yet insecure about “am I Latin enough?” That’s one thing that tested really well when we tested our pilot, was Hispanics saying, “I love that she doesn’t speak Spanish, because I didn’t learn how to speak Spanish. But we’re totally tied to our culture and totally tied to our traditions and totally tied to our heritage.” I have since learned Spanish.

You’re going to learn to love her because of everything she has to face. What would you do if you had to work every day with your ex-husband that you hate? And then you’re working with a woman who hates you, and then there’s this younger woman, who’s nipping at your heels, ready to take your place. So she’s just being attacked from every which way, but yet it’s one big loving family, because we have each other’s backs.

Can you tease any guest stars?

We have Zachary Levi of course, who’s coming to play and is a lot of fun. We have Kate del Castillo, who’s a big Telenovela star, and Carlos Ponce, they are in our Telenovela rival episode. We also have Ricardo Chavira, my husband from Housewives, he came and played with us, so we have a lot of fun.

Telenovela also stars Jencarlos Canela, Diana Maria Riva, Jose Moreno Brooks, Alex Meneses, Amaury Nolasco, Jadyn Douglas and Izzy Diaz.