Playing a Secret Service agent may not seem like the most obvious choice for the Desperate Housewives star, however Longoria feels this particular role is close to her real personality. “That’s probably closer to who I am as a person than [her Desperate Housewives' character] Gabrielle - ‘Girl with a gun.’ I’m from Texas. I grew up with guns and I grew up with my dad educating us early about guns. We used to go target shooting all the time. We would shoot beer cans and coffee cans. Anything that exploded and made noise, we’d shoot it.
Then before Desperate Housewives I did LA Dragnet, which required intense SWAT training from the LAPD. That was way more intense than the training for this movie because the secret service, they’re more tactical. When they pull their gun, they intend to use it where SWAT and all of that they use their guns every day. So I was really comfortable with this. All the roles I’ve played before Desperate Housewives were cops and detectives and all of that, those kinds of roles. So this was coming back home to me.”
So Gabrielle was the anomaly? “Exactly, that’s why I was so blessed to get it and I was really lucky. I get lucky every day that I get to play her because she’s so big and so just fun to play and opposite of me that I’m really lucky to get to do that as an actor.”
The Future of Desperate Housewives: Can the show continue to thrive for its scheduled seven year run? Longoria said, “Well, we haven’t slowed down. Critics always go, ‘Ratings slump for Desperate Housewives.’ We’re like, ‘25 million?’ Even if we slowed down by half it’s still a highly rated show. If we were doing 14 million a week, that’s better than 90 percent of the shows on television. I don't think we’re going anywhere soon. I keep hoping we’ll go seven years and that’s it.”
Audiences Can’t Get Enough of the Women of Wisteria Lane: The success of the show took Longoria completely by surprise. “Yeah, absolutely. I was probably the most surprised because I was just really naïve. Teri [Hatcher] and Nicollette [Sheridan] and Felicity [Huffman] and Marcia [Cross], they had all experienced hit shows and they’d all been around. Marcia kept telling me, ‘Get ready, it’s going to be big. Get ready.’ And I’m like, ‘Ready for what? What are you talking about? What do you mean?’ Then it did. It hit, I’m like, ‘Oh my God, this is what you’re talking about.’ It was great though. It was fun. Our first year, even our second year I couldn’t keep up with the good news. It was just good news after good news after good news.”
All that success can make life a little crazy no matter how prepared you are. Longoria confirmed, “Yeah, it brings a lot of craziness. For me, I consider myself really lucky and really blessed to have the show. I’m also lucky to have a great family and great friends around me who are very grounding. Tony [Parker], as well, is really grounding. So for me, I think the craziness comes when you start to believe your own hype and you just kind of get caught up in all of the superficiality of our business. Felicity gave me the best advice. She’s like, ‘It’s all about the work. Just always make it about the work and good things will come.’ That’s what we’ve been doing.”
Facing New Motherhood – on Desperate Housewives: Longoria’s character just adopted a baby on the show, but the actress doesn’t believe that will slow her down any. “I think it’s a lot of opportunities for more comedic things. She’s still going to be Gabrielle. She still ain’t gonna change diapers. I think this Sunday’s episode… Do we have an episode tonight? No? It makes me so mad, reruns. Well, the next episode, I actually forget the baby at home. So I think she’ll still be Gabrielle. She’s still going to be her.”
Longoria’s happy her character chose to adopt. “I thought it was a nice evolution of Gabrielle and kind of a turn to making her a little less selfish.”
