Eva Longoria is a recurring character in Season 4 of Only Murders in the Building. She is an actor playing the fictionalized version of Mabel in the movie based on the podcast and is portrayed by Eva Longoria.
History[]
Eva attended a party thrown by Bev Melon for the purpose of introducing Mabel, Charles, and Oliver to the actors playing them in the movie based on their podcast with the intent of persuading them to sign the contracts to allow it. At the party, she met Mabel, her real-life counterpart. Mabel was flattered to be played be Eva Longoria, but wondered why they aged her character up. Eva explained that focus groups found the age gap between her and the two guys creepy, but she and Mabel were basically the same age anyway.
Later, Mabel was at the bar attempting to order, when Eva approached and ordered tequila for both of them. She told Mabel how she built her empire by expanding into other industries and encouraged Mabel to ask for a ton of money and use it to build something for herself.[1]
Eva came to New York along with Zach and Eugene at the request of the Brothers sisters to do a character study on Mabel, Oliver, and Charles. Eva wanted to make a more aggressive persona for Mabel, whom she called Mabél. She wanted to accompany Mabel on her investigation, but Mabel brushed her off and chastised her for jumping to conclusions and touching the murder board. When Mabel went to talk to Rudy Thurber, she was shocked to find Eva already in his apartment talking to him. He served them eggnog and began talking to them. Mabel asked him about the decor and said it was missing her favorite thing. He said he had other things not in the living room. The ham radio in the room started playing the theme from Perfect Strangers, drawing Mabel's attention. She asked about it and he left the room to get rid of it. While he was gone, Eva said she wanted to be more aggressive, while Mabel was against the idea of goading a possible killer. Rudy came back to find Mabel looking in his drawers. She tried to cover for it by activating a Santa on the table. He took the Santa and asked her not to touch it. When Eva got a notification that her dinner plans had been moved up, she decided to get more aggressive. She started breaking his decorations and trying to get him to admit to being the killer. This culminated in her taking a gun off the wall and firing it only to find out it wasn't a real gun. Rudy finally admitted that he had no motive to kill Charles because he actually hated Christmas and only made Christmas-theme content because it was the only content that got any attention. He felt imprisoned by it. Mabel apologized and asked him to look at the tinsel they'd found in the apartment where the shot was fired. He tried to light it and said it wasn't tinsel because it didn't light. Mabel thanked him and apologized for Eva's behavior. Eva said that as a consolation, Michelle Obama would be seeing his TikTok. He thought that was a euphemism for something, but Eva didn't clarify what she meant.
As they left, Eva told Mabel she'd be skipping the part where she was wrong when she told the story. Mabel admitted that Eva did help her speed things up because she would have spent weeks thinking Rudy was a viable suspect without Eva. She decided to take a page out of Eva's book and took the police tape off the Dudenoff apartment and went inside.[2]
Eva came to the promotional photo shoot to take pictures for the movie. While there, at Mabel's request, she insisted that Howard put out tacky mats from her company so she wouldn't get dust in her nose. Really, Mabel was trying to collect footprints to find out who was a match for the print left at the crime scene. Soon after this, the photo shoot was interrupted by gunshots.[3]
When Charles, Mabel, and Oliver fled New York for their safety, the actors followed, including Zach, who had left the hospital to do so. They wanted to help with the case. Mabel initially refused, but after Loretta told her actors were investigators and seeing them correctly deduce three key traits about Bev, Mabel gave them a rundown of the case and left them to work together in one room while she worked in another.
The next morning, the actors woke everyone in the house and told them that the case actually went back to season one, with the question of who poisoned Winnie and who left the note on Jan's door. Charles realized that Sazz knew and surmised that that's what she wanted to tell him.[4]
The actors continued to assert themselves as members of the investigative team. After talking to the podcast trio, they developed a plan to get the Westies to confess to killing Dudenoff and Sazz. This involved inviting them over for a star-studded game of "Oh Hell." The Westies accepted the invitation, but when they arrive, they shut the door, pulled out a knife, and said they knew they knew about the checks. They demanded that everyone hand over their phones. They denied killing Dudenoff and, one at a time, explained how they had met Dudenoff and come to live in the Arconia in one of his apartments. Then Dudenoff made good on his dream to live in Portugal and left. And they hadn't heard from him since. They kept up the ruse by cashing his checks. Just as they finished, Helga came to the door and said she was there to tell the truth. She shared her own story of meeting Dudenoff and coming to live in the Arconia after her father's death. She believed the Westies had killed Dudenoff because she'd gotten a letter saying he had moved to Portugal and then they began acting strangely. This led to her eventually moving out. Helga's revelation forced the Westies to tell the truth. The night of the power surge, Dudenoff invited all of them except Helga to the basement. He had a terminal illness and had taken a large amount of pills. He asked them to burn his body in the incinerator and keep cashing his checks so they could continue to live in the Arconia together. He recorded a message for Helga in case she found out, but didn't want her to know because she had had a hard time bouncing back after her father's death. They showed her the recorded message and then held her as she cried. They asked her to move back in and she agreed to do so. As they left, Eva revealed she'd recorded the Westies confessing to Social Security fraud. Despite Eva's insistence that it would make a good podcast episode, Mabel declared they wouldn't be using it, as the podcast had brought them together and she didn't want to use it to split the Westies apart. Instead, they recorded an episode, using the story of Dudenoff moving to Portugal.[5]
After the trio solved the case, pinning Marshall P. Pope as the murderer, filming of the movie continued, with Sazz finally being recognized as the actual writer of the script. Eva, Zach, and Eugene were happy to take credit for helping solve the case.[6]
Personality[]
Relationships[]
Career[]
She is an actor. She was cast to play Mabel Mora in the movie based on the Only Murders in the Building podcast.[1]
Notes and Trivia[]
Gallery[]
Episodic[]
Episode Stills[]
Appearances[]
| Season Four | |||||
| #01 | "Once Upon a Time in the West" | #05 | "Adaptation" | #09 | "Escape From Planet Klongo" |
| #02 | "Gates of Heaven" | #06 | "Blow-Up" | #10 | "My Best Friend's Wedding" |
| #03 | "Two for the Road" | #07 | "Valley of the Dolls" | ||
| #04 | "The Stunt Man" | #08 | "Lifeboat" | ||
References[]
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