Some careers are handed over on a silver platter. Carlacia Grant’s was not one of them.
Who Is Carlacia Grant?
Carlacia Grant is an American actress born on January 18, 1991, in New Haven, Connecticut, best known for playing Cleo — the fiercely loyal, Caribbean-born Pogue — in Netflix’s hit series Outer Banks. She joined the show in Season 2, which premiered on July 30, 2021, and was promoted to series regular from Season 3 onwards.
Before any of that, she was working as an Uber driver, a server at The Cheesecake Factory, and a bartender — auditioning between shifts, holding onto a dream that kept threatening to slip away. Her story is not about overnight success. It is about a decade of grinding, relocating, and refusing to let go even when every signal said it was time to quit.
Carlacia Grant — Quick Facts
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Full Name | Carlacia Grant |
| Date of Birth | January 18, 1991 |
| Birthplace | New Haven, Connecticut, USA |
| Nationality | American |
| Ethnicity | Haitian (mother) & Jamaican (father) |
| Parents | Carline Grant (mother), Karl Grant Sr. (father) |
| Education | Florida State University — BS, Media & Communication Studies (May 2023) |
| Known For | Cleo in Netflix’s Outer Banks (Season 2–present) |
| TV Debut | Roots — History Channel (2016) |
| Modelling | Miss Junior Teen Miami Division winner |
| Estimated Net Worth | ~$1 million |
| Social Media | Active on Instagram |
Growing Up Between Two Cultures
Carlacia was born in New Haven but grew up in South Florida, in the Miami and Coral Springs area, after her family relocated when she was young.
Her roots are deeply Caribbean. Her mother Carline is Haitian. Her father Karl Sr. is Jamaican and a businessman. Growing up in a traditional Christian Caribbean household meant that creative careers were not exactly the family plan. Law. Medicine. Business. Those were the conversations at the dinner table — not acting auditions.
Her grandmother’s influence runs deep. The woman worked 40 years without a single day off. She once told Carlacia words that stuck: “I’ve worked so hard to give you guys this opportunity.” That sentence became a kind of compass — not to follow the safe road necessarily, but to never waste the chance she’d been given.
As a little girl, Carlacia would sneak into her mother’s clothes and perform monologues in the mirror, imitating television broadcasters. Nobody told her to do it. Nobody was watching. It was pure instinct — the kind that tends to win in the end.
She was also a pageant girl early on. She won the Miss Junior Teen Miami Division title and began modelling with agencies including Lily Pulitzer and Le Chic Couture. The runway gave her poise. But it wasn’t where her heart was.
The Spark — A Summer Camp and a Story About Treasure
When Carlacia was thirteen, her grandmother suggested she try a summer acting camp. It was the kind of low-stakes suggestion grandmothers make that occasionally changes everything.
She was cast as the lead in a production of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island.
That was it. That was the moment.
Standing on that stage, something clicked into place that no pageant or modelling gig had ever touched. She wanted to act. Not model. Not broadcast. Act. From that point forward, the question was never whether — it was only how.
The Struggle Years — Uber, Cheesecake Factory, and Almost Walking Away
This is the part of Carlacia’s story that deserves the most space, because it is the most honest.
She left Florida Atlantic University to pursue acting full time. For a Caribbean-American girl from a family that valued stable careers, this was not a small decision. It was, for a while, an uncomfortable one.
She moved to New York City — living between Harlem and New Jersey — and began the grind that every aspiring actor in America knows. Auditions. Rejection. Auditions. More rejection. To pay rent and keep going, she worked wherever the shifts were available.
| Job | Where |
|---|---|
| Server | The Cheesecake Factory |
| Uber Driver | New York City |
| Bartender | Various |
| Door-to-Door Merchandiser | Atlanta |
| DoorDash Driver | New Orleans |
None of it was glamorous. All of it was necessary.
The years were passing and the big break wasn’t coming. The dream was wobbling.
Then came the Uber ride that changed things.
One day, Carlacia picked up a passenger in New York. The woman’s name was Kylie Bunbury — an actress who had appeared in When Calls the Heart and Pitch, among others. They got talking. Bunbury found out Carlacia was an actress. She encouraged her. She told her, in so many words, that she was on the right path and to keep going.
It sounds almost too cinematic to be real. But it happened. And those words, from a stranger in the back seat, reignited something Carlacia had been close to letting die.
She eventually relocated to Atlanta — by then a growing hub for TV and film production — then New Orleans, and ultimately settled in Los Angeles. Each city was another chapter. Each move was another bet on herself.
Early Career — Getting Her Foot in the Door
The first meaningful television role came in 2016 when Carlacia was cast as Irene in the History Channel’s remake of Roots — the landmark miniseries about the transatlantic slave trade and its generations of consequences.
This was not a small debut. Roots is emotionally and historically enormous material. Playing any role in it with conviction requires range, composure, and a real understanding of weight. Carlacia delivered.
From there, she built her résumé steadily.
| Year | Project | Role | Network |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | Roots | Irene | History Channel |
| 2017 | Game of Silence | Leesha | NBC |
| 2017–2020 | Greenleaf | Danielle Turner | OWN |
| 2021 | The Resident | Supporting role | Fox |
| 2021–present | Outer Banks | Cleo | Netflix |
Alongside the acting work, she was modelling for brands including American Eagle, AE Jeans, Elf Cosmetics, and Tommy Hilfiger. She was making it work — piecing together income, building experience, staying ready.
The Outer Banks Audition — The Tape Nobody Asked Her to Resend
In November 2020, Carlacia auditioned for Outer Banks. Then she waited.
Weeks passed. Nothing. The kind of silence that, after years in this industry, you learn to read as a no.
Her manager pushed her to resend the audition tape. She did. That second submission — the one that technically wasn’t even requested — got her a callback.
In the chemistry read, Carlacia made a decision entirely on her own instinct. She leaned into a Caribbean accent for Cleo. Nobody had asked her to do it. She just felt it was right for the character.
It turned out the casting team had been specifically looking for someone with authentic Caribbean roots. Her heritage, her instinct, and her boldness in that room sealed the deal. Cleo was hers.
There is a lesson buried in that detail. The role didn’t come because she played it safe. It came because she added something nobody asked for and trusted that it was right.
Cleo — The Character Who Found a Family
Cleo is introduced in Season 2 as a street-smart teenager from Nassau, Bahamas — an orphan, hardened by circumstance, working as a crew member on Captain Terrance’s cargo ship. She is not looking for connection. She has learned, the hard way, not to trust it.
When she first crosses paths with John B and Sarah, she is guarded, quick-witted, and completely self-sufficient. By the end of Season 2, she makes a choice — she jumps ship, literally and figuratively, and joins the Pogues.
That leap is the emotional core of Cleo’s entire arc.
| Season | Cleo’s Arc |
|---|---|
| Season 2 | Introduced in Bahamas; helps John B and Sarah; joins the Pogues in the finale |
| Season 3 | Promoted to series regular; Pope-Cleo romance develops; learns to trust and be loved |
| Season 4 | Terrance’s death devastates her; grief, rage, and a revenge arc take over |
| Season 5 | Final season — confirmed returning |
The Pope-Cleo dynamic is one of the show’s most layered relationships. Cleo has never really been loved in the way Pope loves her. Accepting that — letting someone in without expecting to be abandoned — is the hardest thing the character has to do.
Carlacia has described Cleo’s vulnerability beautifully: “Her Achilles’ heel is trusting these people.”
Season 4 pushed Carlacia to entirely new emotional territory. Terrance, the man who gave Cleo her first real sense of belonging, is killed. The grief that follows is not quiet or polite. It is raw, volatile, and very real. It is some of the best work Carlacia has done on the show.
Beyond the Character — Degrees, Brand Deals, and the Person Called Lacey
Here is a detail that most people miss entirely.
In May 2023 — while she was a series regular on one of Netflix’s most-watched shows — Carlacia Grant graduated from Florida State University with a Bachelor of Science in Media and Communication Studies.
She finished her degree. While filming. While doing press. While building a public profile from scratch.
That single fact says more about who she is than any interview quote could.
On set, she is known affectionately as “Lacey” — the nickname the cast gave her early on. By her own account, she was embraced by the ensemble from her second day of filming. The Outer Banks cast has a reputation for genuine warmth off-camera, and Carlacia slotted into that dynamic as if she had always been there.
She keeps her personal life private. No confirmed public relationship, no tabloid drama. Her social media presence is active but intentional — focused on her work, her culture, and causes she cares about.
Her brand partnerships — American Eagle, AE Jeans, Elf Cosmetics, Tommy Hilfiger — reflect a marketability that goes beyond the show. She is building something longer than a single role.
What Carlacia Grant’s Story Really Says
She is a first-generation Caribbean-American who grew up in a household where the dream she was chasing was not the expected one. She left university, moved to three different cities, drove strangers to airports, served tables, and kept sending audition tapes into silence.
She won the role of Cleo not just because she was talented — though she clearly is — but because she had the instinct and the nerve to add a Caribbean accent to a chemistry read that nobody requested it in.
She then finished a university degree while starring in one of Netflix’s biggest shows, because apparently that is the kind of person she is.
The most interesting careers are almost never straight lines. Carlacia Grant’s is proof of that — a zigzag of cities and side jobs and almost-moments that somehow, eventually, landed exactly where it was supposed to.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Carlacia Grant? Carlacia Grant is an American actress born on January 18, 1991, in New Haven, Connecticut. She is best known for playing Cleo in Netflix’s Outer Banks, a role she has held since Season 2 in 2021.
What is Carlacia Grant’s ethnicity? Carlacia is of Haitian and Jamaican descent. Her mother Carline is Haitian and her father Karl Sr. is Jamaican. She grew up in South Florida in a Caribbean-American household.
How did Carlacia Grant get the role of Cleo in Outer Banks? She auditioned in November 2020, heard nothing for weeks, then resent the tape on the encouragement of her manager. In her callback chemistry read, she added a Caribbean accent on her own instinct — a decision that matched exactly what the casting team was looking for.
Is Carlacia Grant in Outer Banks Season 5? Yes. Carlacia Grant is confirmed to return as Cleo in Season 5, which will be the final season of the show.
Did Carlacia Grant really have a Caribbean accent? The accent Cleo speaks with was Carlacia’s own creative choice during her audition, drawing on her Haitian-Jamaican heritage. It was not scripted — she brought it to the room herself.
What did Carlacia Grant do before Outer Banks? She worked as an Uber driver, server, bartender, and door-to-door merchandiser while auditioning. Her notable early roles include Irene in the History Channel’s Roots (2016) and Danielle Turner in Greenleaf on OWN.
Where did Carlacia Grant go to college? She graduated from Florida State University in May 2023 with a Bachelor of Science in Media and Communication Studies — completing her degree while starring in Outer Banks.
