This Delaware native has already won an Emmy for 'White Lotus.' (No, it's not Aubrey Plaza)

We'll have to wait until Monday night to see if Wilmington's own Aubrey Plaza wins her first career Emmy Award for HBO's "The White Lotus."

That's when the ceremony is finally held after a four-month delay due to the Hollywood labor disputes.

Even so, we can report that a Delawarean has won an Emmy already this year for "The White Lotus." How is that, you ask?

The first half of the Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards were held on Saturday, Jan. 6, when the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences announced many of the technical awards and some of acting honors ahead of the star-studded, nationally televised Primetime Emmy Awards. (The remainder were awarded the next day, Sunday, Jan. 7.)

And it was there where 11-time Emmy nominated casting director and Brandywine Hundred native Meredith Tucker won her fifth Emmy Award, this time for the same critically acclaimed show that co-stars Plaza as Harper Spiller.

Fifth Emmy win for Tucker

Tucker, a graduate of Brandywine High School, won Outstanding Casting for a Drama Series along with fellow casting team members Francesco Vedovati and Barbara Giordani, who helped cast in Italy, where the show was set.

"It's a great honor to work on a show that everyone just loves and embraces because that doesn't happen all the time," Tucker said after accepting the award on stage last weekend from actress Cynthia Addai-Robinson ("The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.")

Tucker had won previously for the first season of "The White Lotus," "Boardwalk Empire," "Veep," "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" during her nearly 25-year career, which got its big casting break on "The Sopranos."

From Brandywine Hundred to Hollywood

Tucker's road to Hollywood casting can be traced back to her high school years on Foulk Road, where she acted in school productions and later at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, where she studied history and acted on the side.

In fact, it was at Wesleyan where she first spotted classmate and now-longtime friend Mike White, creator of "The White Lotus," who has written everything from the 2003 film "School of Rock" to this year's animated movie "Migration."

Even back then, Tucker says she knew he was special.

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"He was far and above the most talented and just the funniest. He was head and shoulders above with his talent and magnetism," Tucker told Delaware Online/The News Journal last year. "And it wasn't just me who saw it. Everyone noticed that he was just much more.

"He is truly one of the most generous, loving, wonderful people out there. He's just an amazing person."

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It was several years before that when Tucker first tried the non-acting side of show business as a college intern for New York Theatre Workshop, where she read plays and worked backstage before helping with casting, although it was mostly clerical work.

But then she got her first paid casting jobs with a string of accomplished casting directors with impressive credits, first with John Lyons ("The Big Lebowski," "Fargo," "Cocktail") and then Ellen Chenoweth ("Terms of Endearment," "A Bronx Tale," "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"). She then worked with Howard Feuer ("Moonstruck," "The Silence of the Lambs," "Groundhog Day," "Philadelphia") for nearly seven years.

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With a lot of her work in Los Angeles, a place that never really grew on her, she decided to move back east and took a job with Walken/Jaffe, led by casting duo Georgianne Walken and Sheila Jaffe. Her first job for them was as casting associate for the third season of "The Sopranos," already a runaway smash hit.

Tucker eventually struck out on her own and now leads her own Meredith Tucker Casting company, based in Manhattan.

She has since cast hits "Boardwalk Empire," "Veep" and "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel," earning Emmys for all three. She also cast White's HBO comedy/drama "Enlightened" starring Laura Dern, the Showtime crime series "Ray Donovan" and Netflix sitcom "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt."

In recent years, she has stayed busy not only with "The White Lotus," but also casting Sylvester Stallone's first leading role in a scripted television series ("Tulsa King"), Forest Whitaker's "Godfather of Harlem" and last year's HBO satirical miniseries "White House Plumbers" co-starring Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux.

The Primetime Emmy Awards airs on Fox Monday at 8 p.m.

Have a story idea? Contact Ryan Cormier of Delaware Online/The News Journal at [email protected] or (302) 324-2863. Follow him on Facebook (@ryancormier) and X (@ryancormier).

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This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: 'The White Lotus' earns fifth Emmy Award for Brandywine Hundred native