Frances Esemplare (September 3, 1934 – December 9, 2017) was an American actress best known for her multi-episode
recurring role
A recurring character is a fictional character, usually in a prime time TV series, who frequently appears from time to time during the series' run. Recurring characters often play major roles in more than one episode, sometimes being the main foc ...
as
Marianucci "Nucci" Gualtieri, mother of
Paulie Gualtieri (played by
Tony Sirico) on ''
The Sopranos'' from 2001 until 2007.
Early life
Born Frances Spalluto, Esemplare was a lifelong resident of
Staten Island, New York.
[
]
Career
Beginning in 2001, she was cast as Nucci Gualtieri, mother of mobster Paulie Gualtieri, on the HBO
Home Box Office (HBO) is an American premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is ba ...
television series, '' The Sopranos''. First introduced as Paulie Gualtieri's elderly mother, it is later revealed in the series that she is Gualtieri's biological aunt, who adopted him as a child. Frances Esemplare debuted in the May 2001 episode, " Army of One," and her character remained on the show until "Kennedy and Heidi
"Kennedy and Heidi" is the 83rd episode of the HBO television series ''The Sopranos'', the sixth episode of the second half of the show's sixth season, and the 18th episode of the season overall. Written by Matthew Weiner and series creator and sho ...
" in May 2007. Esemplare appeared in nine episodes during her recurring role on the series, from season 3 to season 6
A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and po ...
.
Filmography
Film
Television
Death
Frances Esemplare died on December 9, 2017, at the age 83. Esemplare was buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York, on December 13, 2017.
References
External links
*
1934 births
2017 deaths
American television actresses
Actresses from New York City
People from Staten Island
American people of Italian descent
Burials at Green-Wood Cemetery
21st-century American women
{{US-tv-actor-1930s-stub