At 9, Carla Jeffery competed with the Midwest Marauders cheerleading squad in Cincinnati; years later, she became best known as Bree, the Seabrook High cheerleader in Disney's Zombies. Jeffery, whose screen career began in childhood and stretched across two decades, died on September 1, 2026, at 33.

Her longtime manager, Carla Alexander, announced the death through Jeffery's official Instagram account. Alexander said Jeffery had joined Alexanders Talent Management at 12 and stayed with the agency for more than 20 years. "Carla was more than a client; she was family," she said in a statement reported by ABC News.

Jeffery was born in Houston on July 10, 1993. By 12, she was working alongside Mo'Nique in the 2006 comedy Phat Girlz, her first feature-film role. She moved readily between comedy and drama as a young performer. She played Keysha Black in 10 episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm and Janila on Southland, then accumulated guest appearances on iCarly, Good Luck Charlie, Shake It Up!, Scream Queens, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Best Friends Whenever, Game Shakers, and American Vandal. Her agency résumé showed how steadily those credits arrived, listing recurring work for HBO, NBC, Disney Channel, and Netflix as well as supporting film roles.

Bree connected Jeffery's professional life with a skill she had practiced long before a camera found her. Disney's biography recorded her competitive cheerleading at age 9, while the 2018 film cast her as Addison's friend and a member of Seabrook's cheer squad. The film arrived on Disney Channel on February 16, 2018. By the next year, Disney Channel Press reported that it had been 2018's top telecast among children ages 6 to 11 and tweens ages 9 to 14, and that videos from the movie had drawn more than 377 million views. Bree placed Jeffery at the center of a musical world built for a generation of young viewers.

She returned for Zombies 2 in 2020 and performed with the ensemble on We Got This and Flesh & Bone. Disney reported that the sequel's premiere reached nearly 5 million viewers. Jeffery appeared again as Bree in Zombies 3, which premiered on Disney+ in July 2022, and then carried the role into animation. In 2024, she joined the voice cast of Zombies: The Re-Animated Series, giving the same character another form and another chapter. She also lent her voice to Mania in a 2020 episode of Marvel's Spider-Man: Maximum Venom.

The breadth of Jeffery's credits showed a performer who could move from Larry David's improvised social collisions to a police drama, a Nickelodeon sitcom, a musical fantasy, and voice acting. Yet the official Disney Branded Television biography also documented work that happened away from viewers: she helped teach classes at a local acting school. After beginning as a student of the profession in childhood, she shared that experience with other actors.

Milo Manheim, who worked with Jeffery in the first three Zombies films, responded to the announcement with a spare tribute: "Carla. The sweetest person I have ever met. I love you." The words matched the long relationship described by her manager and the continuity of a career that kept bringing Jeffery back to familiar collaborators and to Bree.

Jeffery's work remains visible across the first three Zombies films, its animated series, the television episodes that traced her growth from child actor to adult professional, and the ensemble songs she helped carry. It also continues in the performers she taught. For viewers returning to Seabrook, Bree's cheer, movement, and friendship still bear Carla Jeffery's voice and presence.