“Desperate Housewives” star not idle during Hollywood writers’ strike
IMTA Press Release January 31, 2008
Romantic comedy opens nationwide Friday, February 1st
“
I think it's a light, and fun movie, and I think that it's a nice change in the box office right now, from all the from all the heavy Oscar stuff, all the heavy dramas, and all the blood and gore over Christmas." – Eva Longoria Parker
Kate and Henry were to be married and live happily ever after. Unfortunately, “Bridezilla” Kate meets a tragic end when the ice sculpture for her wedding falls on her. Henry goes to a psychic named Ashley to help him get over Kate's death, but Henry and Ashley fall for each other. Too bad for Ashley that Kate won't move on...even though she's dead.
The story might be tragic…if it were not so funny. 1999 IMTA alum Eva Longoria Parker stars in
Over Her Dead Body as the ghost out to sabotage her former boyfriend’s new relationship. From all accounts, Longoria Parker was anything but “Bridezilla” during her own media-event marriage last year to basketball star Tony Parker, and the Cosmo cover girl is definitely not a ghost—but she plays both as Kate in first-time director Jeff Lowell’s romantic comedy feature, with Paul Rudd as the luckless Henry and Lake Bell as the haunted Ashley. Jason Biggs also stars.
While the plot of
Over Her Dead Body (re-named from the working title
How I Met My Boyfriend’s Dead Fiancée) does sound as if it could be a storyline for an episode of “
Desperate Housewives,” Longoria Parker admits, "That was probably my biggest challenge, differentiating Gabrielle from Kate." In an interview with CanMag.com, she added that she would feel the same way if the afterlife really exists. "I told Tony, 'I would totally haunt you, and not move on…You're not moving on until I move on. We're in this together, this life, the afterlife, and the next, next life.'”
Longoria Parker has a number of projects keeping her busy during the television writers’ strike that has put much of Hollywood on hold, including the filming of “
Desperate Housewives.” She is heavily involved in Eva’s Heroes, a San Antonio non-profit organization she founded that is dedicated to providing services and programs for individuals with developmental disabilities, and Padres Contra El Cancer, a California charity that helps cancer-stricken Latino children and their families. Longoria Parker has also taken on the role of entrepreneur with her newly opened Tex-Mex restaurant in Los Angeles, De Nada, and may again serve as an Executive Producer for the 2008 ALMA (American Latino Media Arts) Awards in June.
Longoria Parker re-teams with Jason Biggs in her current film project,
Lower Learning, a comedy in which she plays an inspector assigned to look into scandalous allegations at an elementary school run by a shady principal. And the release of the animated feature
Foodfight!—in which Longoria Parker voices the character of the villainous Lady X—was originally planned for last fall, but has been rescheduled for April 2008.