James Van Der Beek, who played the titular Dawson Leery on Kevin Williamson’s WB hit Dawson’s Creek, died Wednesday morning after a long battle with colorectal cancer. He was 48. His family confirmed the news on social media.
“Our beloved James David Van Der Beek passed peacefully this morning,” the family wrote on Instagram. “He met his final days with courage, faith, and grace. There is much to share regarding his wishes, love for humanity and the sacredness of time. Those days will come. For now we ask for peaceful privacy as we grieve our loving husband, father, son, brother, and friend.”
Van Der Beek made his professional debut at age 16. He played Fergus off Broadway in Edward Albee’s Finding the Sun with Albee himself directing. Years later, after toplining hit movies and TV shows, Van Der Beek said he was always “a theater kid” at heart.
But TV beckoned, and in 1997, he landed Dawson’s Creek.
The series launched the careers of Van Der Beek, Katie Holmes, Joshua Jackson and Michelle Williams. Jackson, who tried out for the role of Dawson as well as the part he eventually landed (Pacey), later likened the auditioning process to The Hunger Games.
“I think I had like nine auditions for — I think first for Pacey, then for Dawson, then back to Pacey,” Jackson said on the Dinner’s on Me podcast. “And then when I made it to the final, final, final thing, they take you to the Warner Bros. ranch.”
He continued: “In that room are 35 potential kids who are now, like, put into this Hunger Games moment. And you spend literally the entire day getting called in groups, right, like, ‘Okay, you two. You four.’ Getting taken back to the room, you audition, and then you come out, and…four people are just gone. And then two people are gone.”
Eventually, he ended up in a room with the other three bewildered principals thinking: “‘Oh, this is where they eat us, I guess. This is where they put us in the pot.’ And they’re like, ‘Congratulations, you just got the job!’ I don’t even think I knew which role it was that I finally auditioned for.”
Dawson’s Creek became a phenomenon, debuting in January 1998 to the WB’s highest-ever ratings. It quickly became the top-rated show on television among teenage girls, and the most popular program on The WB. It ran from 1998-2003 and was syndicated worldwide. Netflix picked it up in 2020, introducing it to a whole new generation of fans.
Michelle Williams, Joshua Jackson, Katie Holmes and James Van Der Beek in a promotional still for ‘Dawson’s Creek’
James Minchin/Columbia TriStar Television/courtesy Everett Collection
Van Der Beek said recently that part of his inspiration for Dawson came from The Phantom of the Opera.
“Now, nobody in their right mind would ever draw a parallel between the two,” he joked, “but one very big similarity between Dawson and the Phantom of the Opera is that both of them were faced with the reality that the woman they loved truly loved somebody else and said, ‘Go to him. Go to him now before I change my mind.’”
He was referring, of course, to the show’s angsty love triangle in which Van Der Beek’s Dawson and Joshua Jackson’s Pacey famously vied for Joey (Katie Holmes) before Dawson stepped out of the way.
In 1999, as his TV career blossomed, Van Der Beek toplined Varsity Blues, a high-school football drama that also featured Jon Voight, Amy Smart, Ali Larter, Scott Caan and Paul Walker. Three years later, at the height of his Dawson’s fame, the actor starred in The Rules of Attraction, a black comedy based on Brett Easton Ellis’ book of the same name. Shannyn Sossamon, Ian Somerhalder, Jessica Biel, Kate Bosworth and Kip Pardue were among the cast. Though not breakout hits at the time, both films have become cult classics of a sort that capture a specific era.