It’s not every day that you get the chance to speak with the most famous person from your state. There’s been plenty of excitement in Delaware (and elsewhere) for Emily the Criminal ever since it first premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, where it landed a place in our Festiville team’s Best of the Fest. The specific reason for the local buzz around John Patton Ford’s gig economy thriller? The eponymous criminal is played by Wilmington, Delaware-born Aubrey Plaza, a name you’ll hear often in the First State, which I’ve called home since my parents moved me here twenty years ago.

In the gripping Emily the Criminal, Plaza has a stellar turn as a woman breaking bad because the system didn’t give her a choice. Emily is a Los Angeles delivery driver stuck in the free market cycle of temp work due to a minor criminal record. Overcome with student debt and with no other way to push through the financial barrier, she is roped into an elaborate credit card scam run by Youcef (an immensely charming Theo Rossi). As the danger escalates she finds herself unexpectedly thriving in this criminal underworld.

“It’s Aubrey Plaza’s bold, furious performance that sells just how real the situation is,” writes Jacob. Sara agrees: “Plaza brings to life a gutsy character, but one who manages to remain composed even under the direst situations. She emotes so much with her eyes and is as endearing as ever. Emily is vulnerable at first but later becomes stone-cold like corporate America. She’s playing the system, and it’s so satisfying to watch.”

We don’t have many big names to help boost that Delaware Pride, but even if we did, Plaza is someone we’re always thrilled to have out there representing, and she’s constantly been one to pay that love back. Whether it’s making her own claims to the crown of Delaware’s biggest celebrity (sorry, Mr. President) or doing readings of her children’s book The Legend of the Christmas Witch at the Brandywine Hundred Library when she was here for the holidays in December 2021, Plaza’s hometown affection is strong.

When we met on Zoom for a conversation about Emily the Criminal, Plaza was more than game to help the world towards a better understanding of why Delaware is actually a pretty nice place to call home (she hopes to one day shoot a movie here, which would add greatly to a list that isn’t particularly overflowing). We also chatted about Emily the Criminal’s timely social commentary, its gritty influences, and some of Plaza’s own favorite films—hitting on revelatory Johns of both the Waters and Cassavettes variety.

How does it feel for you to be, essentially, the Queen of Delaware?
Thank you so much. I do consider myself the Queen of Delaware, and I consider Joe Biden the King. So, me and Joe are doing great. I love Delaware. I love, love, love Delaware. I have Delaware pride all over my face. I was born in Wilmington. Most of my family is still there. I’m there as much as I can get there throughout the year. I loved growing up there.

Honestly, most of the things that I want to do, I try to incorporate Delaware in some way. I have a cartoon on FX coming out this month called Little Demon, and one of the co-creators is a Delawarean as well that I met at the Wilmington Drama League when I was twelve years old. We set that show in Delaware, so I’m slowly building my Delaware empire on screen.

Delaware is a mysterious state. People don’t know a lot about it. Some people don’t even know it’s a state, which always blows my mind. They’re like, “Delaware is in Vermont, right?” and I’m like, “No, Delaware is the First State.” And you have to recognize that. We’re the First State. We’re the second-smallest state, but we are number one. My goal is to get back to Delaware and shoot a movie in Delaware. That’s when everything will come full circle for me, and I’m working on that right now.

You’ve described Delaware as having a particularly “witchy vibe” to it, which I found amusing because I have a group of friends who refer to themselves as The Coven, and are super into witch shit. What is it about the state that gives off that vibe?
Yeah, you know how it is. There’s so much woods in Delaware. The Blair Witch Project wasn’t shot there, but it was shot in Maryland, not too far away. I grew up in many different neighborhoods. I grew up in the city, in the suburbs, but a lot of my time as a child was spent playing in the woods and letting my imagination go wild. I attribute the witchy stuff to my mother too, because my mother has a witchy kind of vibe. She used to pack us all and my cousins in the car and drive us down to Devil’s Road, which is off 52. There are all of those legends about Cossart Road and the baby sacrificing tree. You know what I’m talking about.

Yeah, as a kid my friends and I would go into the woods and genuinely believe we were being haunted by something, or someone was there trying to kill us.
As teenagers, that’s what we would do. We would drive around in the woods, we’d find creepy old dilapidated DuPont estates and try to break into them, you know. It’s a place that has so many different kinds of places in it, even though it’s so small and in such a concentrated area. You can imagine all kinds of stuff going on there. It’s a place that has a really old history, and when you’re dealing with a place with old, old history, that will conjure ghosts and spirits and things like that. It’s all kind of connected there.

Sometimes when I’m doing interviews the other person will ask me where I’m located and I say Delaware and they give me this response like, “... oh,” like a little surprised but almost kind of pitying.
[Laughs] Oh yeah, like “I’ve driven through there.” Right, right.

I was doing a podcast with a friend last night and he said that Wayne’s World is the only thing he ever thinks about when thinking of Delaware.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You and everyone else, buddy. People don’t know, man. They just don’t know, but they will. They will know.

Do you have a film-related memory that you attach to Delaware? A film that when you watch it again, or even just think of, it specifically reminds you of Delaware for whatever reason?
Man, that’s a good question. Delaware, at least Wilmington, has kind of a New England vibe to it sometimes, especially as I get older because I always go back for the holidays. So, there’s always movies like Groundhog Day that feel kind of Delaware to me, even though that’s not set in Delaware. There’s a small town vibe to it, I think. 

John Waters movies always make me think of Delaware. He’s from Baltimore, which isn’t too far away, and I was exposed to John Waters movies as a teenager. I remember that changing my life and blowing my mind. That’s very Delaware to me, remembering going to the video store and getting a new John Waters movie and watching those.

There’s only a handful of widely distributed films shot in Delaware, with Dead Poets Society definitely being the biggest one, which they filmed at St. Andrew’s School just outside Middletown. Have you ever been to the Everett Theatre, where they shot the Midsummer Night’s Dream sequence from the movie? They’ve got the seat where Robin Williams sat reserved now so no one can sit there again.
Yeah! In fact, when I was in film school, my producer partner Dan Murphy—who also went to film school with me, who I also met at the Wilmington Drama League as a teenager—we shot his student film at the Everett Theatre. It was one of his student films that I was acting in, but I also might have been assistant directing it or something. Working on the crew in some way, for sure, since it was a student film. So yeah, I’ve not only been there, but we’ve shot a student film in that theater. It’s a beautiful theater.

That’s so fantastic, I was going to ask you if there were any specific Delaware references that only people from here would get.
Oh, definitely. And there are visual references, too. We wanted to be specific. Even the Feinberg house, we used Arden, Delaware as a reference, which is a more artistic, sort of woodsy community that has these really interesting old houses. There’s super interesting architecture in Delaware that people don’t really know about. The show is set in Middletown, but there’s a lot of Wilmington in the show as well. It’s a perfect location. It’s on the ocean, it’s by the bay, but it’s two hours from New York City and it’s three hours from [Washington] DC. It’s got everything in one, so the possibilities are endless.

Getting into Emily the Criminal, your character Emily isn’t from Delaware, but she is from Jersey, which brings a certain kind of “take no shit” attitude. She’s a total badass, who I honestly wish I could be more like, myself. What’s a lesson you feel people could take from Emily?
There’s an authenticity to her, and yeah, a “take no shit” attitude that is so admirable because she says the things that everyone’s thinking but nobody says. There’s two job interview scenes in the film that take really hard left turns that you don’t see coming. It’s a typical power dynamic that you’re watching. People feel familiar with being in that situation and interviewing for a job, but not many people would say the things that Emily says and make the decisions she makes. I think it’s supposed to be cathartic for the audience to have someone make those decisions that you could only dream of making, and watch them play out in real-time.

The portrayal of today’s job market feels so authentic, capturing that idea of being stuck in a rut and unable to get out of the financial situation you’re in, usually because of some arbitrary reason that shouldn’t be so restrictive but of course in this world it is.
It’s interesting because the film was written years ago, like pre-pandemic and even pre-Trump era, but man, times have not changed that much. It’s almost more relevant now than when it was written, because we are still living in a time where the system is broken. It’s not working properly.

People are overqualified, they’re graduating from schools with an enormous amount of debt and with student loans. They’re overqualified and underpaid, getting asked to do internships where they don’t get paid, which doesn’t make any sense. And people are fed up about it. It was written in a time before the gig economy, but that’s where we’re at.

The movie, for me, is entertaining on many levels, and I think the social commentary is there, but it’s not being shoved down your throat. There are these very specific moments that shed light on the struggle that we’re all in, that this current generation is up against, and that we don’t have an answer for. The movie is like a revenge thriller for the gig economy worker. It’s incredibly frustrating, but that’s why I love it, because it’s so relevant.

There were a ton of movies that John was referencing, and we had so many conversations throwing out all kinds of references. Taxi Driver was a big one. That’s New York, but more of a character-based reference we were pulling from.

I remember being like 30 minutes into it and just thinking, “This is my favorite kind of movie. I’m obsessed with this.”
Yeah, me too. It’s the kind of movie that I want to watch, but they don’t make a lot of them now.

Since we’re Letterboxd, I feel like that’s a perfect transition into asking you: what are your four favorite films of all-time?
It’s hard. When I think about movies I love, my brain thinks about directors first, and movies from directors I love. Movies that blew my mind, Barry Lyndon is a big one. That movie from [Stanley] Kubrick is just mind-blowing, a masterpiece of film that made me fall in love with movies. [Ingmar] Bergman, Scenes from a Marriage blew my mind when I saw that for the first time. Mainly because it’s like, how do you make one conversation between two people compelling on camera for that long? He makes it look so easy, and it’s not.

A Woman Under the Influence is a big movie for me. [John] Cassavetes movies, I love Opening Night. I’m just going to keep saying more movies. Cassavetes to me is really important. His movies felt like early improv movies and they’re just so real and natural and the performances—Gena Rowlands is so incredible. I think I’ve always been fascinated by two people in a relationship making a film. Obviously, my husband is a director and we’ve made movies together, so that’s a whole other world of things that are interesting to me.

John Waters changed my life. I mentioned that earlier, but Serial Mom was one of the first weird indie movies I saw as a teenager that blew my mind where I was just like, “What? Like, what? How is someone making a movie that is so f—king weird, but it’s playing in movie theaters?” I couldn’t believe that movie and how insane it was.

What excites you the most at this moment in your career? What gets you up in the morning and hyped to go to work when you’re in the middle of a project?
I think at this point, working with passionate people. A passionate director that really has something to say wakes me up in the morning. There’s so much content and so many things being made right now, so much television, so much everything, that it’s really rare to find yourself making art that feels like you’re making art. Emily the Criminal felt like a purely artistic experience to me. That’s why I love independent films.

So it’s definitely about the people and the material, but I think there’s a vibe there where if something feels like it’s being made because this person has something to say, that gets me up in the morning. Rather than people making stuff just because they can, or making stuff because they want to make money. Intention is really interesting to me right now.

Maybe we can get a sequel campaign going for the two of you to be together.
Yeah, I want to work with her again. I’m manifesting that. I’m going to do a full moon or new moon spell to manifest a project with her. I think we’re not done with each other.

I’ll be first in line for that. Thanks so much for chatting with me, and especially for being so down for all the Delaware talk, it was a joy. Maybe we’ll run into each other at Christiana Mall around the holidays sometime.
I’ll see you at Brew Ha Ha, man!

I’ve got so many friends who work or have worked there.
I’m there every time I come. That’s like my spot!