Joining the show as Gabrielle and Carlos’ daughter Juanita after the time jump between seasons four and five, De La Garza remained with the show through its series finale. Since Desperate Housewives wrapped, the younger half-sister of Demi Lovato has grown up (she turned 18 in December 2019) and has appeared in the films Caged No More and Gnome Alone as well as in shows like Good Luck Charlie and Bad Teacher.
De La Garza has gotten candid about the hate she received over her appearance while on Desperate Housewives, which she said led her to develop an eating disorder.
“I would spend hours and hours reading comments,” she recalled on a 2023 episode of the Heart of the Matter podcast. “They said things like they wanted me to die because of what I looked like. It was like, ‘Ugly fat cow. And I hope you get cancer and die because you’re so fat.’ And just horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible things. And this is when I was 6, 7, 8 years old.”
“My first memories of trying to starve myself, I was 7 years old,” she continued. “A lot of it came from reading those comments. My family had no idea that this was going on. My mom had no idea that I was seeing these things, that I was reading these things, because I was very, very sneaky about it.”
In September 2024, she announced she’s expecting a baby with Ryan Mitchell. Sadly, the child, a daughter named Xiomara, died later that month after being delivered via an emergency C-section, the actress said the following October.