Eva Longoria was told to "put on her male privilege pants" when she wanted to bag a directorial role.
The ‘Desperate Housewives’ star was talking to the show’s producer Brian Tanen ahead of her audition for a director’s job when he urged her to stop "asking" and instead walk into the room as if she had already secured the role.
She shared: "I was practising pitching for the job with him and he said, ‘Stop right there. Put on your male privilege pants and stop ASKING to do this movie. Walk in the room as if that movie’s yours and you’re directing it and tell them this is how you’re going to cast it, this is how you’re going to shoot it.’ And I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, yeah! I’m not a man and I’m not white, so I wouldn’t think to do that.’ It was a change in approach to every sentence that came out of my mouth. Because as a woman, we want to be amenable. We want to be seen as cooperative."
Eva also opened up about her auditioning during her early career, where she did nine auditions in one day, finishing with ‘Desperate Housewives’, which made her a star.
She told The Sun on Sunday newspaper: "You don’t have a choice when you’re starting out. You need experience. You need to show people what you can do. I had nine auditions and I was changing in my car, driving from audition to audition – as a nurse, then a hooker … I was changing, changing, changing, not thinking, ‘I don’t want to play a hooker!’ I was like, ‘I have to get a job, I’ll play the hooker!’ … ‘Desperate Housewives was the last audition of that day, the ninth one. I hadn’t read the script. I was exhausted. I remember walking in and show creator Marc Cherry goes, ‘So, what do you think of the script?’ I was like, ‘Nobody ever asks me that.’ They’re like, ‘Next!’ Nobody has a conversation with you. I was honest and said, ‘You know what? I didn’t read the script. I read my part and my part is great.’"