Even though the end of Dawson’s Creek and currently airing 2025 TV shows have decades between them, the teen drama's legacy continues to live on. The 1998 WB show helped launch multiple careers, including those of Katie Holmes, Michelle Williams and James Van Der Beek. Before its debut, the latter star didn’t expect much from being cast as Dawson Leery, but Van Der Beek reflected on how that feeling didn’t last long, thanks to few key happenings related to the pilot airing.
Van Der Beek, along with fellow ex-castmate Kerr Smith (who played Jack McPhee), attended Steel City Comic Con to dish about all things Capeside (via People). The Varsity Blues alum didn’t expect much to change from starring on the new but then smallish network teen show. Specifically, he shared that when he felt that previously for a movie he had done right before DC nothing came of it. Things started to click for him when people were talking about the billboards, and when he saw it for himself, he knew. In his words:
So when I was in Dawson's Creek, we were in North Carolina — we were far, far, far from Hollywood, we were on the WB Network, which, at the time, was a network that I didn't even get on my closed-circuit cable in my dorm room — so some people were saying, 'Are you ready for this to change your life?' [I was] like, 'I've been down this road before. This is not going to change anything.' And they said, 'Oh no, they're buying billboards,' and I said, 'Whatever.' And then they flew me to L.A., and I saw a billboard with my face, like, blown up a thousand times bigger than my head already is, and I saw my name on the billboard.
It’s odd to think of the TV world before the total takeover of teen television. Besides Dawson and his friends, there were only a smattering of truly youth-focused titles at that point. And while the 90s let the genre take root, Dawson’s Creek gained almost instant popularity. Though, it’s understandable that Van Der Beek didn’t expect too much from the titular role ahead of the show’s airing.
He went on to share the unexpected reaction he had to realizing his name was up on the sign for all the world to see, and it has to do with his name.
It was just hilarious to me because I've had to type my name my whole life, like, shift, capital J, space, shift, capital V, space, shift, so the fact that somebody else had to press that shift button four times was the most hilarious thing. It struck me as so funny, and I started laughing.
Weirdly, considering the person who wrote out the advertisement, and his four part name is something Dawson Leery would do. For me, it’s something I wouldn’t have expected a young creative on the precipice of true fame to focus on, but I guess I wouldn’t really know how I’d react.
Regardless, another moment struck Van Der Beek not long after his billboard realizations. While doing an appearance, many more loud and appreciative fans showed up for him than he ever imagined. That’s when the new star started accepting his fate. Per the actor:
Two weeks in, I was doing an appearance in Seattle, and they said, 'There are going to be 100 people here.' And I said, 'There are not going to be 100 people.' And there were, like, 500, and they were screaming, and I was like, 'Whoa, this thing is going to be way bigger than I ever thought it was going to be.'
I’m glad that Van Der Beek caught wind of how fast Dawson’s was taking off (though he believed Dawson's went off the rails not long into the series). As we all know, as the show went on, Dawson Leery (Van Der Beek), Joey Potter (Holmes), Jen Lindley (Michelle Williams) and Pacey Witter (Joshua Jackson) slowly became unmistakable names and performers across pop culture. Most of the alumni, including the Varsity Blues actor, still get hounded about the iconic series randomly, although they did just celebrate the 20th anniversary not long ago.
As new waves of watchers tune in with a Hulu subscription, the discourse has expanded even more. Unfortunately for the ex-Capeside star, more people than ever think that Dawson Leery could be the absolute worst at times thanks to some pretty deplorable behavior. But for the most part, the Capeside clan and those who portrayed them will live more fondly in audiences' memories.