“I was chasing a butterfly and fell in by accident!” yelled Flower, the sweet-yet-naive ghost of a 1960s hippie, when she was rescued from the bottom of a well by her ghost friends. Flower was missing throughout the third season of the CBS TV series “Ghosts,” but the character, played by actress Sheila Carrasco, returned for the fourth season on Oct. 17. Her return was celebrated by the cast and fans alike.

A 2000 U-High graduate, Ms. Carrasco grew up primarily in Chicago’s South Side, her father a Methodist minister and her mother, Joyce Carrasco, a third grade teacher at Lab. She joined Lab in second grade, and at age 7, an “Annie”-obsessed Sheila performed in a rendition of the movie at a local community theater.

More than three decades later, Ms. Carrasco is loved by fans who’ve followed the show since its premiere in 2021.

Based on the original British series of the same name, “Ghosts” follows a young couple who inherits a rundown country estate, which happens to be filled with ghosts.

Despite her success, Ms. Carrasco’s journey was one of perseverance.

“I did a lot of theater growing up mainly because I just loved it,”  Ms. Carrasco said in an interview with the U-High Midway. “I got the bug, and I just really liked being on stage, and I just loved the kind of temporary nature of making a show because it was like working on a great art project with other people, and you get to do it and get to perform and then it’s done and you move on to the next thing. That’s what I still love about it today.”

She participated in a lot of community theater growing up, attended Lab’s summer theater program and learned the fundamentals of acting in middle school theater. Yet high school was different.

“I just felt really busy with basketball and also I was intimidated. I was totally intimidated by the theater kids,” she said. “I think eventually I just missed doing theater so much that I made myself audition.”

Ms. Carrasco performed in a rendition of “Arcadia” for the seasonal Student Experimental Theater and never looked back. She played in fall and spring productions, directed for S.E.T. her senior year, and wrote the 2000 spring musical.

Ms. Carrasco said she learned a lot from high school theater director Liucija Ambrosini, despite her intimidating reputation. Ms. Carrasco loved how Mrs. Ambrosini directed.

“It demanded you get outside of yourself and fill out the painting she was trying to paint all the time with her staging, you know, and filling shapes as much as possible,” Ms. Carrasco said. “And that’s so important developmentally, I think, in high school, to push those physical boundaries in a way to express yourself, because it’s easy to become tight and small and suppress emotion.”

Inspired to pursue a theater career, Ms. Carrasco attended the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, where she learned how to self-produce, direct and design sets. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in directing and set design in 2004, and wanting more serious acting training, attended Harvard University for graduate school in 2007.

After obtaining a Master of Fine Arts in 2009, she moved to Los Angeles with her boyfriend at the time, now her husband.

While trying to build her name in Los Angeles, Ms. Carrasco worked many side jobs. She’s been a dog walker, a nanny for four different families, retail manager, tutor, barista and so much more. The variety in job experience came in handy when she started writing comedy.

“It was so much easier when I wrote what I knew and I could write about all these crazy characters I would come into contact with every day that I would fall in love with, like regulars at the coffee shop or, you know, the woman that ran the flower shop I worked at,” Ms. Carrasco said. “Things like that really become material for you.”

When not working her side jobs, Ms. Carrasco did commercial work and took classes at the Groundlings Theater, a sketch comedy troupe and school where character comedians go to develop their skills. She explored improv, wrote skits and characters for herself and uploaded content to social media.

Her hard work paid off, and she booked “Ghosts” during the pandemic. It was a dream come true to Ms. Carrasco, a life-long fan of “The Office” who’d always wanted to be a part of a show that could make its audience laugh.

“[To] just be one of the, like, 10 characters that has a really strong point of view, a couple of jokes an episode, like, I will be so happy,” she said. “And that’s basically what the show is: We’re a real ensemble, we make each other laugh, we do improve every day, we work with the most amazing guest stars. Yeah, like, it’s a dream come true. It really is. I have so much fun.”

This story was originally published on U-High Midway on October 21, 2024.