Did You Know Meryl Streep and Eva Longoria Are Related?!
The latest season of Only Murders in the Building was a family affair for the two actresses.
The latest season of Only Murders in the Building was a family affair for Eva Longoria and Meryl Streep.
The two actresses appeared in Season 4 of the series, and it turns out they're not only co-stars: They are also "cousins." Longoria told Jimmy Fallon that she and Streep are distant relatives during her March 19 Tonight Show visit — a fact they discovered when they both participated in Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s 2010 four-part docuseries, Faces of America.
RELATED: Kevin Bacon Sounds Exactly Like Tom Petty Singing "Free Fallin'" with Jimmy Fallon
Meryl Streep and Eva Longoria call each other "cousin"
"I was so excited," Longoria told Jimmy Fallon. "And then I was at the Golden Globes or.. something backstage, in the green room. And my friend was like, 'There's Meryl. Go say you're her cousin!' I'm like, 'I'm not gonna go up to Meryl Streep and say we're cousins. It's not gonna make any sense. I don't know if she saw that part of the show.'"
As it turns out, Streep did see that part of the show.
"As I'm like, 'No, I'm not gonna do it,' I hear, 'Cousin! Cousin!' Longoria recounted, acting out Streep's warm greeting. "I was like, 'Oh, my God!'"
"That's how cool Meryl Streep is," Fallon chimed in.
"So I was like, 'Clearly you got the talent in the family.' And she's like, 'Clearly you got the beauty,'" Longoria said of their backstage interaction.
In a 2024 interview with DuJour, Longoria revealed she and Streep do actually call each other "cousin."
RELATED: Meryl Streep Made Her SNL Debut in the Anniversary Special's "Close Encounters"
“We’ll say, ‘How are you, cousin?’ and ‘I’m good, cousin,'" Longoria told DuJour. At the first table read for their Only Murders in the Building season, in which Longoria plays a version of herself, Streep introduced the Desperate Housewives alum as her cousin. "She tells the story and everyone’s so confused," Longoria, who is Mexican-American, told DuJour. "Because I’m the most Latina person in the industry and she’s Meryl Streep."
In her episode of Faces of America, Longoria — who was born in Corpus Christi — talked about her family's Texas pride, telling Gates, "My family really has a strong sense of where it came from."
"I always felt really connected to my culture, whether it was through language, through religion, through tradition," she continued. "It was just the way we grew up. If people ask me what I am, I say I'm a 'Texican.' Not Texan, not Mexican. Texican."
