How The Good Doctor’s Paige Spara Landed The Role … From Her Childhood Bathroom?
Though “The Good Doctor” has seen itself as the target of plenty of memes over the last little while, that hasn’t done anything to diminish the show’s popularity. The medical drama remains consistently among the most-watched shows on ABC, even after being on the air for six seasons and over 100 episodes.
While the show is named for autistic surgeon Shaun Murphy (Freddie Highmore), there’s another character who has been with the show since Season 1. Lea Dilallo (Paige Spara) joined “The Good Doctor” midway through Season 1 and has been a part of the series ever since, eventually becoming Shaun’s roommate, love interest, and wife over the course of the show.
However, to hear it from Spara, she almost didn’t even bother auditioning for the longtime role. In fact, part of why she was so hesitant to send in an audition tape in the first place was that Spara was visiting her parents. Still, she managed to make an audition for “The Good Doctor” work from the bathroom of her childhood home. “I had to set it up in our bathroom because it was the only room during that hour of the day that had enough light,” the actor told Trib Live.
Paige Spara nailed the audition even with that caveat
“It’s a really small bathroom, and it smelled like bleach because my mom had just scoured it,” Paige Spara recalled. “My mom was like, ‘You’ve got this, hun.'” It looks like her mom was right, as the performer was able to clinch the role, which eventually made her a central cast member of “The Good Doctor,” even with the restrictions of filming in a bathroom.
Since landing the part, Spara has gone on to appear in 104 of the show’s 116 episodes, with her most recent storyline on “The Good Doctor” seeing her having Shaun Murphy’s child. Her character has also grown professionally in the series, going from an automotive engineer to the head of the IT department at a university — not a bad deal when you consider how she nabbed the role.
“I happened to be visiting my mom and dad in Washington, and I had gotten the audition while I was at home, and I wasn’t going to do it because it’s very strenuous to do a self-tape when you don’t have the proper equipment,” Spara recalled. Still, she went for it in the end, and the rest is history.
