Laura Slade Wiggins

Wiggins is the daughter of Kathy Wiggins and prominent Athens attorney Mark Wiggins.^[2] She has one brother.^[3]

She has guest starred in various shows including Eleventh Hour, and in an episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation titled "World's End".^[4] She also played a pregnant teenager in an episode of the fourth season of Private Practice called "The Hardest Part".^[5] She had a recurring role in the 2013 series The Tomorrow People. From 2011 to 2013, Wiggins appeared in her first significant role as a series regular in the Showtime black comedy series Shameless as the troubled promiscuous teenager Karen Jackson, the daughter to agoraphobic Sheila (Joan Cusack) and a love interest to Lip Gallagher (Jeremy Allen White). Wiggins was a part of the main cast in seasons one and two, and had a recurring role in season three.^[6] On the frequent nudity featured throughout Shameless and Karen’s promiscuous characterization, Wiggins stated, “One of the things I like about Shameless is that the women are extremely sexual and up front with their emotions.”^[7]

In 2012, Wiggins was cast as the co-lead in William D. MacGillivray’s coming of age drama film Hard Drive, which premiered in 2014.^[8][9] She portrays Debs, a runaway harboring a secret past.^[9] Wiggins subsequently had a leading role as a girl struggling with an eating disorder in the Lifetime television film Starving in Suburbia (2014).^[10][11]

In 2014, Wiggins appeared in the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Comic Perversion" as Carly Rydell.^[12] In 2017, Wiggins appeared in the horror film Rings, the third installment of the Ring franchise.^[13] In 2019, she played a supporting role in the Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase.

Wiggins had a leading role as Rebecca Almazoff in the Canadian musical film Stand! (2019), a film adaptation of the stage musical Strike! (2005).^[14] On the film’s themes, Wiggins stated, "The story is very much needed in the States right now because we’re really having a hard time understanding that we were all immigrants once. We have this immigrant-phobia now. This story is about how all people should be treated the way you would want to be treated."^[14] Neil Weisensel of The Globe and Mail praised Wiggins' performance in a "complex ingenue role."^[15]

Wiggins married stuntman Kyle Weishaar in Colbert, Georgia on June 23, 2018.^[16]