LAUREN GRACE CARGO is a producer and street casting director living in New Orleans, Louisiana. My work spans the worlds of narrative, documentary and commercial filmmaking and thematically I focus on work set in the American gulf south. I moved to New Orleans at 18 to attend Tulane University and graduated with a BA in Film Theory and Environmental Studies. I never left.

 

I have been developing my non-traditional casting practice since 2012 and have a background in street casting for feature films, commercial campaigns, short films, documentary projects and photoshoots. I believe in casting real people: people with their own complex voice and story who connect naturally with a project based on shared experience and personality. I look for depth of character as well as a telling face. I've spent anywhere between a few weeks and a few years on casting for different pieces— my process is always different and can be adapted to meet the needs of any production. In-person scouting is the pillar of my practice, supplemented with research and outreach online. Casting for films can be site-specific in important ways and spending time in the field is a large tenet of my process. In all of my work I seek to redefine accepted standards of beauty and gender and to highlight unappreciated uniquenesses of the human spirit. I believe deeply in widening representation and seek to advocate for those often invisible in the media.

​

I've hosted a radio show with WTUL 91.5fm on (most) Thursday nights called Cry, Cry Baby for going on eleven years now. Projects I have contributed to as a producer and as a casting person have played at Sundance, AFI Docs, Holly Shorts, New Orleans FF, Oxford FF, Austin FF, Sun Vally FF, the Super Bowl, the Whitney Biennial and PBS. My motto is always: people first.