TCA: From 'Gossip Girl' Bus Tour Guide to Starring Role on 'Kevin From Work' for Paige Spara

Related: Complete Coverage of TCA Summer Press Tour

Beverly Hills, Calif. — Kevin From Work is not just Paige Spara’s first starring role — it’s her first TV role.

It wasn’t too long ago that she was the Gossip Girl bus tour guide in New York City. To make matters worse at the time, she said she didn’t have cable so she had to binge-watch the entire series in a week to prepare.

After she graduated from college in 2012, a manager reached out to her based on a commercial she was in. Spara spent two straight years going on audition after audition before reading the pilot script for Kevin From Work and finally landing a part.

Speaking at the show’s TCA summer press tour panel Wednesday, Spara said it was the first audition she ever walked out of feeling good and not needing affirmation from anybody. “For the first time it was just so comfortable,” she said.

In Kevin From Work, the ABC Family workplace sitcom premiering Wednesday, Aug. 12 at 8 p.m., Spara plays Audrey, the object of coworker Kevin’s (Noah Reid) affection. Kevin professes his love to her before accepting another job, only for that job to be rescinded. “You can’t keep a secret in a cubicle,” said executive producer Barbara Adler.

Adler said that while everyone else played the character as a flirt in their auditions, with Spara there was a confidence that she could be anything. “It was important to have an actress who both women and men could like as audiences,” Adler said. "I thought that was a great quality she had that really made it when she walked out of there, we too felt that it was good."