“We don’t get a lot of bites at the apple,” Longoria said about Latina directors. “My movie wasn’t low budget by any means — it wasn’t $100 million, but it wasn’t $2 million. When was the last Latina-directed studio film? It was like 20 years ago. We can’t get a movie every 20 years.”

Longoria continued, “The problem is if this movie fails, people go, ‘Oh Latino stories don’t work…female directors really don’t cut it.’ We don’t get a lot of at-bats. A white male can direct a $200 million film, fail and get another one. That’s the problem. I get one at-bat, one chance, work twice as hard, twice as fast, twice as cheap.”

“You really carry the generational traumas with you into the making of the film,” Longoria said. “For me, it fueled me. I was determined.”

Dr. Smith — founder of the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, which this past week unveiled the The Inclusion List with the Adobe Foundation — praised Longoria for “walking the walk,” having worked closely with the actor-producer-director on the Inclusion Initiative, which provides research on diversity and inclusion in entertainment.

“This was a collaborative effort to reward folks that are doing well on-screen when it comes to representation across multiple categories: gender, race, ethnicity, LGBTQ+ as well as people with disabilities and over the age of 65,” Smith said, explaining the Inclusion List. “Are we showing the stories that aren’t told? And then who is working behind the camera?”

“28% of ticket buyers at the box office are Latino,” she said. “Your film will not succeed if you don’t have the Latino audience. Do you know how many Latinos showed up for ‘Crazy Rich Asians’? Do you know how many Latinos bought a ticket for ‘Fast and the Furious’? We over-index at moviegoing, so why shouldn’t there be content for us if we are the ticket buyers? If we are the viewers? … For me, I take great pride in throwing around that buying-power weight. If you don’t speak to us, we may not buy that movie ticket.”

“We’re still underrepresented in front of the camera, we’re still underrepresented behind the camera, we’re still not tapping into the females of the Latino community,” Longoria said. “We were at 7% in TV and film, now we’re at 5%, so the myth that Hollywood is so progressive is a myth when you look at the data.”

“The illusion is that Hollywood is progressive,” she added. “The reality is that we’re still far behind in equal representation.”