Working Mom La Rue Strikes A Balance

Eva La Rue (Natalia Boa Vista) balances two jobs: acting on CSI: Miami and being a mom to eight-year-old Kaya.

Kaya is aware of her mother’s work on television, but La Rue is able to keep her professional life separate. “The only time that it really becomes apparent to her is if people stop me in the street, and then she will say to me, ‘Don’t introduce me mom,'” the actress said with a laugh. “She would rather hide behind me, stay anonymous.”

At eight years old, Kaya is too young to watch Miami, but she does know a bit about her mother’s job. “The show is too adult for her, and too scary, so she’s not allowed to watch it,” La Rue explained. “But, has she seen clips of it? Yeah. She’s seen safe little clips of it, and she’s been to the set a zillion times.”

“The good thing about her coming to work is that the makeup lady, Maureen, is awesome about taking a little time and doing huge gashes on her cheek and giving her a black eye and stuff, so that she can see that it’s fake,” La Rue continued. “She can see that the blood isn’t real. In the beginning, when she first came to set, she was scared to death to even have the makeup lady do that on her, because she thought it was going to hurt. She thought it was real blood, and it was somehow going to hurt her. But now she sees that it’s all fake, all pretend. So when we are watching TV now, and if anybody gets bloody or hurt she’s like, ‘Momma is that makeup?'”

Having a mom on TV doesn’t have much of an affect on Kaya’s interaction with kids her own age. “A lot of her friends are my best girlfriends’ kids, so she’s known them since she was born,” La Rue explained. “There’s no real distinction there one way or the other. They have just known me since they were born as well, and they know it’s what I do for a living. I guess you know some of the kids at school know that I am on TV, or I think their parents have talked about it. And usually we get past that right away. You know, they want me to sign their backpacks—it’s kind of cute.”