Eva Longoria may actually be relieved that ABC is closing up Desperate Housewives in a few short months. All that network set-work must be getting in the way of her writing, producing, and non-profit work. Especially now that she’s sold a new legal drama, Vega v. Vega, to the CW.

The Hollywood Reporter tells us that the hour-long drama Longoria and Warner Bros. Television are developing for the mini-net “centers on a brilliant young successful lawyer who suddenly finds herself forced to go into practice with her mother, a pioneering female attorney, with whom she has a love/hate relationship.” And no, there’s no indication that Longoria will be either one of the female attorneys in question–she’s strictly producing this, along with a couple of executive producers fresh from Housewives (a good indication that the people who are working with her now want to keep working with her in the future.)

Read the rest of this entry »

The Hispanic Organization of Latin Actors is the national longest-running arts service and advocacy organization…and they are not very happy these days. They are denouncing as “inappropriate” the casting of two non-Latinos in the Latino specific roles of “Jackie” and Veronica” in the Hartford, Connecticut regional production of The Motherf**ker with the Hat.

The most vocal critic is actually Stephen Adly Guirgis, the playwright himself. He recently said, “The two romantic leads in my play were written very specifically as Latinos in their late 30’s—Nuyoricans to be exact. When HOLA contacted me about the casting of the regional premiere of my play in Hartford, it seemed curious to me that Theaterworks had cast two young white actors in their early 20’s to play characters who were quite different from them both age-wise and ethnicity-wise. Since the play was cast in NYC and Hartford, it seemed even more curious to me that actors closer in age and ethnicity could apparently not be found. I believe firmly in casting the best actors for the roles, but when you write a play about two characters who are of a certain age and ethnicity—and it is cast in NYC—it is not unreasonable to expect that the actors who get cast will match up fairly squarely with what you wrote and intended.”

You can read more about the controversy here…and then read even more from political writer Jose R. Sanchez, Chair of the Board of the National Institute for Latino Policy.

Sanchez had been confronted with people asking him, quite simply, “What’s the big deal?” What difference does it make if Latinos are playing Latino roles on stage–or at all? He makes an articulate argument about the importance of seeing Latinos in these roles–a position that’s kind of a fundamental principle behind Se Fija!—in a recent essay on the New Generation Latino Consortium. Read the rest of this entry »