Eva Longoria On Teaming with Hard Rock Cafe for Women’s History Month, Who Inspires Her the Most

Eva Longoria is mixing up something special with Hard Rock Cafe to celebrate Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day.

The Flaming Hot director and her luxury tequila brand, Casa Del Sol, are adding an exclusive Pink Lace Margarita to Hard Rock Cafe menus in the U.S. and select Mexico locations through April as part of the hotel and restaurant chain’s We Are initiative. A portion of proceeds from the colorful cocktail will benefit Magee-Womens Research Institute (MWRI) and the Eva Longoria Foundation to further the nonprofit’s efforts in supporting education and entrepreneurship opportunities for Latinas and their families.

In addition to serving up the pink drink, Hard Rock Cafe will showcase female musicians at its outposts around the world as part of a series with Women Who Rock. On March 7, Hard Rock Cafe Las Vegas will host the We Are Exceptional benefit concert with performances by rising artists including Rhonda Smith, Orianthi and Cindy Blackman Santana. Tickets are $10 and proceeds will go to MWRI.

“I’ve always been a fan of the brand, and through my tequila, I’ve gotten to know the head of marketing; she’s Spanish,” Longoria tells The Hollywood Reporter. “She said, ‘You should do this International Women’s Day thing. And I was like, ‘Tell me more.’ I feel like we just had a shared passion about women’s health, women’s safety, women’s issues, and I had no idea Hard Rock did this every year, so I said, ‘Sign me up.’ I love giving back to organizations that give opportunities to women or to organizations supporting women. There’s so many things they do throughout Women’s History Month, and they [asked] if I could help amplify it.”

The multihyphenate has been recognized for her advocacy for the Latinx community, women and those with disabilities. In 2023, she was honored with the Morton E. Ruderman Award in Inclusion for her commitment to supporting people with disabilities through her nonprofit Eva’s Heroes, and she was presented with the Crystal Award for Advocacy at Women in Film’s WIF Honors celebration. She was also named by THR as one of Hollywood’s top 50 changemakers.

Longoria spoke with THR from Atlanta, where she’s currently filming The Pickup, Amazon MGM’s heist comedy co-starring Eddie Murphy, Pete Davidson and Keke Palmer. Here, she shares more about her Hard Rock Cafe partnership, the inspiring women in her life and her upcoming Apple TV+ series, Land of Women.

What where some of the initiatives that convinced you to say yes to the partnership with Hard Rock?

There’s a lot of things. First of all, one of the things they do is spotlight nearly a thousand performances by female musicians in different special events in its cafes and its hotels and its casinos throughout March. That’s huge. Giving women the literal stage — talented female musicians — over a thousand performances during Women’s History Month, that to me was really cool. But they also support a couple of different specific foundations. The Hard Rock Heals Foundation, which is the charitable arm of Hard Rock, gives to the Magee-Womens Research Institute and Global Gift Foundation, and they do a lot of fundraising efforts and events. [I thought], ‘This is pretty cool.’ I love corporate responsibility, and I always feel like any time a corporation is big and as a global brand as Hard Rock gives back to the consumers whoare consuming their products, I think it should be applauded. I was like, ‘Absolutely.’ Let me help highlight these organizations that they’re money for.

What have you loved about working with Global Gift Foundation and Magee-Womens Research Institute so far?

Well, Global Gift Foundation and the Eva Longoria Foundation, we really focus on helping women reach their full potential in life. And that could be through educational programs, entrepreneurial programs, economic programs where there’s different programs that we fund and sponsor and support that would give women economic mobility, that would give women access to better healthcare and clean water. There’s so many issues that women disproportionately face and [at] the Global Gift Foundation, we’ve always focused on women and children because we have found that if you help a woman, she will help her family. And when you improve the lives of families, you’re improving the lives of communities, hence nations, because nations are built one community at a time. So the Global Gift Foundation and the Eva Longoria Foundation really focus on women and children’s issues.

Who are some of the women in your life who inspire you?

My mother inspires me, my special needs sister inspires me. Today, we always think we have to look to famous people to be like, ‘Oh, where can I get inspiration?’ I never have to look far. The women around me, the women I surround myself with, inspire me. My friends inspire me. The women around me, their work ethic, their independence, their intelligence, their emotional intellect, all of it. All of it to me is very inspiring. And I think you want to be surrounded by people who inspire you and who you admire.

We could probably have an hours-long conversation about inspiring mentors.

I know. And I also feel like you can have mentors you’ve never met. There’s so much content and access to people … I follow so many inspirational speakers somebody like Jay Shetty, who’s a friend. Another example is Oprah — she gives so many great lessons through her social media platforms. There’s so many people you don’t have to know to learn from. You just study their work and you study their patterns and you study their experiences, and you can learn from those experiences without ever having met them. Sometimes I think people [say], ‘I don’t know. I don’t have a mentor.’ They’re everywhere.

You have quite a bit of projects coming down the pipeline, too. Since we’re talking about International Womens Month, can you share more about your upcoming series, Land of Women?

It’s a dramedy. It’s actually really funny. It’s based on a book called La Tierra las Mujeres [by Sandra Barneda], which is called Land of Women, and I loved this writer, Ramón Campos, who created the show. I adapted one of his other shows, Grand Hotel. It was a Spanish show from Spain, and I adapted it for English with Demián Bichir. I produced and directed it, and I just fell in love with his writing.

I told him, ‘Ramón , write me something in Spain. I want to go shoot in the wine country in Spain. I’ve never shot in Spain!’ And literally not even less than a year later, he came back with a script, an idea, a book. I was like, ‘Oh, we’re doing this. You wrote this. Okay!’ So I felt like I had to go do it.

My character’s name is Gala, and the premise of the first episode is she has to flee New York due to some financial circumstances. She has a very comfortable life as a New York socialite.

She has to bring along her mother [who has dementia] and her rebellious daughter to go with her, and they go to Spain to be in hiding. They end up going to the town the mother grew up in, and it’s a town she left because she had so many secrets. So it’s this multi-generational show about these three women who really don’t know each other, even though it’s grandma, mother and daughter, it’s like they’re strangers to each other and this adventure leads them back to each other.

What else are you working on that you can share?

I will be working [on The Pickup] and Only Murders in the Building. So I’m popping between this movie I’m doing with Eddie Murphy, Pete Davidson and Keke Palmer. It just got announced today (Feb. 29), but I’m here in Atlanta shooting that, and I will be shooting Only Murders in the Building with Selena [Gomez] and Steve [Martin] and Marty [Short] in New York. So I’m just going to be bouncing between Atlanta and New York. I am so excited, I cannot wait to start on both of these.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.