Carla Jeffery

Carla Jeffery was an American actor best known as Bree, the bubbly Seabrook High cheerleader and loyal best friend to Addison in Disney’s Zombies franchise. She starred in Zombies (2018), Zombies 2 (2020) and Zombies 3 (2022), and later voiced the character in Zombies: The Re-Animated Series (2024). Before Seabrook she built a working career from childhood - guest spots across Disney Channel and network television, a recurring role on Curb Your Enthusiasm, and early film work opposite Mo’Nique in Phat Girlz. In 2022 she spoke publicly about living with epilepsy, after years of keeping the diagnosis private for fear it would cost her auditions. She died on 1 September 2026, at the age of 33. Her longtime managers at Alexanders Talent Management announced her death the following day; no cause was made public.

Carla Jaran Jeffery was born on 10 July 1993 in Houston, Texas. She was a twin; her brother Carlon Jeffery also became an actor, later known for playing Cameron Parks on Disney Channel’s A.N.T. Farm. The family spent time in Cincinnati, Ohio, before moving to Los Angeles in 2005 so both siblings could pursue entertainment careers. Carla joined Alexanders Talent Management at twelve and remained with the agency for more than twenty years - a relationship her managers later described as family rather than client work.

Her screen career began around age twelve. In 2006 she appeared as Jazmin in Phat Girlz opposite Mo’Nique. Through the late 2000s and 2010s she worked steadily in guest and recurring parts: iCarly, Good Luck Charlie, Shake It Up, Southland, Suburgatory, Scream Queens, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Uncle Buck, American Vandal and others. One of her most substantial pre-Zombies credits was Curb Your Enthusiasm, where she played Keysha Black across multiple episodes as part of the Black family who moved in with Larry David after Hurricane Katrina.

In 2018 she was cast as Bree in Disney Channel’s Zombies. Disney reported that the February 2018 debut drew 2.57 million viewers for its premiere telecast, with eight telecasts over the opening holiday weekend reaching 10.3 million total viewers. Jeffery returned for the sequels and the animated series, and also voiced Mania in Marvel’s Spider-Man: Maximum Venom. Co-stars later said the brightness she brought to Bree matched who she was off camera. Milo Manheim called her “Carlaboo” and “the sweetest, kindest, most loving person.” Chandler Kinney wrote that she was “a bubbly, vivacious heart-of-gold cheerleader who loved nothing more than to uplift those around her.”

Jeffery began having seizures at eighteen. For years she kept the diagnosis quiet, worried casting directors would see epilepsy before they saw an actor. While filming the first Zombies movie she had a seizure on set and woke up in an ambulance, which forced the conversation with Disney; by her account the studio was supportive. In 2022, during Disability Pride Month, she appeared in a Disney Channel PSA and spoke with the Epilepsy Foundation about no longer hiding her disability. “I want everyone to know not to be scared of who you are,” she said. “I’ve had this for years, and it’s not going anywhere. I just have to work around it.” After her death the Cameron Boyce Foundation called her an incredible advocate for the epilepsy community. Her management did not announce a cause of death, and nothing in the public record should be read as connecting her death to epilepsy.

In an August 2025 interview she spoke about what it meant to see young Black girls dress as Bree. “I want to cry because I guess I never thought I’d see myself as somebody’s inspiration,” she said. “But young Black girls looking up to you? That’s what I want to keep doing.”

Alexanders Talent Management announced her death on 2 September 2026, asking that her family’s privacy be honoured. Her twin brother Carlon reposted the statement with a message he had sent her - that her light was special and must be protected, and that he had her back “in this life and the next.”

Jeffery’s legacy sits in two places: the Disney musical franchise that made her familiar to a generation of viewers, and the quieter decision, in her late twenties, to stop hiding a neurological condition the industry often treats as a liability. She left a completed arc inside a popular franchise, a body of work that started in childhood, and a public record of refusing to let a diagnosis define the edge of what she was allowed to want.