Sara Paxton Recalls Thinking That Steve Carell Was ‘Going Places’ During His ‘Riffing’ Scene in 2004’s Sleepover (Exclusive)

Sara Paxton knew way back when that Steve Carell was a superstar.

The actress, 36, worked with Carell in 2004 teen comedy movie Sleepover — a year before Carell became a household name with his beloved series, The Office. In the film, Paxton, Alexa PenaVega, Kallie Flynn Childress, Brie Larson and Mika Boomer play 8th graders whose paths cross when a slumber party turns into a scavenger hunt full of hijinks. Carell was Sherman Shiner, a security officer the girls encounter throughout their night of adventures.

“I remember I didn’t have a full scene with Steve Carell, but there is a scene where the doorbell rings in Alexa Vega’s house, and we think it’s the pizza or they think it’s the pizza,” Paxton tells PEOPLE during a recent interview. “And I open the door and it’s him. He’s like the bicycle security. He’s like the Paul Blart. And I say something like, ‘Oh, whatever,’ to him.”

Paxton says Carell, now 62, was “riffing and kind of improvising and saying really funny things.”

Even then, as a teen, Paxton says she knew: “That guy’s really good.”

“I was like, ‘That guy’s going places,’ ” she recounts. “I’m like 14, ‘That guy’s going places.’ Yeah, he was very, very funny.”

Carell, of course, went on to great success, and has been nominated for an Oscar, multiple Emmy Awards and has won a Golden Globe.

Paxton has also gone on to have a successful acting career as well. The actress recently starred in the second season of Based on a True Story, in which she portrayed Paige, the Copycat Killer who was seeking vengeance for her sister Chloe’s murder. Speaking to PEOPLE about joining the second season of Peacock’s dark comedy series, Paxton calls the cast inviting.

“They were so warm and welcoming,” she says. “Everybody on the crew. When you’re going into a season 2 … it’s nerve-racking because it’s like starting high school or sophomore year or something and everybody knows everybody already and you’re like the new kid and you’re just kind of nervous like, ‘Where am I going to sit at lunch?'”

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Continues Paxton, “But that all went out the window once I showed up because everyone was so nice and so warm and welcoming.”

Based on a True Story is now streaming on Peacock.