Happy's Place Star Belissa Escobedo Appeared In The American Horror Story Spin-Off

Contains spoilers for "American Horror Stories" Season 1.

Belissa Escobedo helps "Happy's Place" fans shake off the work week every Friday night as Reba McEntire's sidekick. The duo plays half-sisters and business partners running their late father's bar in the workplace sitcom (which will have a star-studded guest lineup when "Happy's Place" Season 3 premieres in mid-October). However, McEntire's character, Bobbie, didn't know her sister Isabella existed before she was summoned to a bar for the reading of Happy's will. Needless to say, there's an adjustment period as southern cynic Bobbie and her staff get to know the bubbly and opinionated Isabella.

But before landing "Happy's Place," Escobedo played a completely different kind of character on a show that is about as different as it's possible to get from a workplace comedy. She was in the cast of "American Horror Stories" for two episodes of Season 1. The show features standalone horror stories and myths often connected to past seasons of its anchor show, "American Horror Story." Escobedo's episodes, "Rubber (wo)Man: Part One" and "Part Two," were connected to "AHS" Season 1, which is set in a murder house. Escobedo plays Scarlett Winslow's best friend, Shanti, in the episodes. Shanti alerts Scarlett to the humiliating prank that becomes the catalyst for Scarlett transforming into her murderous alter ego, Rubber Woman. 

Although Belissa Escobedo is having success as energetic Isabella in "Happy's Place," in a 2024 interview with Teen Vogue, she confessed that her favorite genre is horror, so playing Shanti was close to her dream of starring in a horror film, but not quite a fulfillment. She explained that Shanti was meant to die, but after seeing her performance, the writers changed her fate, much to Escobedo's disappointment. "She got a brutal death, and I was so excited for it," she admitted. "Then they were like, 'Actually we think you're playing her so sweet, we don't want to kill her off.' And I was like 'Dang it, no. Kill me.'" 

A year after playing Shanti, Escobedo played Izzy in the highly anticipated sequel to the 1993 classic Halloween film "Hocus Pocus." Izzy is one of two teenagers who accidentally bring the Sanderson sisters back to power in the modern day and have to find a way to stay alive and save the world from the havoc that the sisters wreak everywhere they go. Escobedo told Teen Vogue that the original film was her favorite to watch every Halloween. "The fact that I got to watch them on screen, Ms. Bette Midler as Winifred, and then be with her as Winifred is crazy. It was very much [an] out-of-body experience. It still is," she said.