When spring finally sprung in North Carolina, it could not have come a moment too soon for Sasha Alexander.

The actress, who had been living in Wilmington to shoot the TV series Dawson's Creek since last summer, was nursing cabin fever and recovering from flu on one not too distant dead-of-winter day.

"It's really, really gloomy here today. It's pouring rain," Alexander, 26, said over the phone as she drank tea, hunkered down in her pajamas at her beachfront house.

On Dawson's Creek, the teen-angst-athon that airs Wednesday nights at 8 on WPIX and Friday nights at 8 on Global, Alexander plays Gretchen, the older sister of Pacey (Joshua Jackson).

A college dropout, Gretchen keeps busy tending bar and tempting Dawson. Her arrival prompted a flurry of fansite speculation that she would be the Dawson De-Virginator.

"They were really careful about introducing me into the show. They really spent the first portion of this year introducing me to give people a chance to get to know me and like me before we dived into a relationship," Alexander said, well aware of the Nobody But Joey For Dawson sentiment among some intense followers.

"As far as the De-Virgining thing, I don't know. I don't know where they're heading. There's definitely some juicy stuff coming up which I won't give away, but as far as that goes, I don't know."

Alexander is a graduate of USC's school of Cinema and Television and has worked mostly in L.A. and New York. She's best known for playing an edgy publicist in the ABC twentysomething drama Wasteland. It was the most talked about and talked up show of its season -- and then it lasted three episodes.

"It was just this outside machine working, but the inside machine wasn't there. The writing wasn't there. It could have been but it just didn't work. People over-estimated how easy it would be," said Alexander, who nonetheless still gets fan mail from overseas, where all of the episodes aired.

Yes, she does find it funny to be only 26 and already playing the 'older woman,' as she does on Dawson's, where Gretchen is meant to be age 21.

Soon, she'll be back to playing with boys her own age. She's to co-star with Dan Cortese in the Fox TV pilot Ball & Chain about a divorcing couple with super powers which only work when they are together.

Note that that will not be shot in Wilmington, which anyone would find to be still a sleepy little town, notwithstanding the odd Vince Vaughan-Steve Buscemi bar brawl.

"It's not like L.A. where people don't care," Alexander said. "They'll just come up and ask you questions. Like when you go to the market. 'What are you eating?' It's bizarre."