James Van Der Beek will always be Dawson Leery. Never mind that Dawson’s Creek ended more than 20 years ago. For fans of the show, the character Van Der Beek created – sensitive teenager, aspiring film-maker, soulmate of Katie Holmes’s Joey Potter – occupies a special place in our hearts.
Perhaps you never liked Dawson’s Creek, because it featured the world’s most frighteningly articulate teenagers addressing each other in rapid-fire sentences with the weary wisdom of middle-aged psychiatrists. “We can still remain friends despite any mounting sexual theoretics,” said no 15-year-old ever, except Dawson to Joey in the pilot episode.
For those who surrendered to it, however, including the Britons who watched it as part of T4’s “hangover TV” Sundays, Dawson’s Creek (1998-2003) was the perfect coming-of-age show. All that intellectual wordiness reflected the fact that young people do take themselves seriously, and have grandly heightened emotions – and here was a series that didn’t patronise them. The show explored serious themes and teenage dreams, and Van Der Beek, who has died aged 48, was the actor who held it all together.
At the heart of the show was the love triangle between Dawson, Joey and Pacey Witter. Joey would climb into Dawson’s bedroom via a ladder to his window. Nobody in their right mind wanted Dawson and Joey to end up together, because Pacey (Joshua Jackson) was the laidback and funny one. Dawson was too earnest, too needy and would have spent the whole relationship wanging on about his idol, Steven Spielberg. One of the most popular GIFs on the internet is “crying Dawson”, his face crumpling after telling Joey to follow her heart and be with Pacey.
Yet it’s a testament to Van Der Beek that he maintained the character’s popularity and his role at the heart of the series. Nobody wanted this hero to get the girl, but they did want him to be happy, which is just what the show finale gave him – the beginnings of a career as a film director. Movies, after all, were Dawson’s true love. One of the sweetest elements of the cast reunion last year – a reading of the pilot episode organised by co-star, Michelle Williams, in aid of charity – was a video message from Spielberg, saying, “Dawson, you made it.”
That reunion, held in New York City, demonstrated the love that endured for Van Der Beek. The actor was diagnosed with colorectal cancer in August 2023 and shared the news publicly in November 2024. He was due to attend and join in the reading of the pilot script, but was too unwell. Two of his daughters joined the cast to sing the Dawson’s Creek theme, I Don’t Wanna Wait. Van Der Beek had six children with his wife, Kimberly, and documented their happy home life on Instagram.
Seeing the cast together again made you muse on how their careers have turned out. Williams has garnered the most critical acclaim (five Oscar nominations to date, for films including Manchester by the Sea and Spielberg’s own The Fabelmans). Holmes became, for a time, insanely famous thanks to her marriage to a sofa-jumping Tom Cruise. Jackson has a secure acting career and continues to be handsomely Canadian.
Van Der Beek acted in other projects both during and after his time on Dawson’s Creek. In 1999, he starred in the American football drama, Varsity Blues, working with Jon Voight and winning an MTV Movie Award. He played against type as the drug-dealing student, Sean Bateman, in an adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s The Rules of Attraction (2002).
He never achieved major Hollywood leading man status, instead taking TV roles (Pose, CSI: Cyber, Don’t Trust the B---h in Apartment 23), appearing in Dancing with the Stars and most recently in The Masked Singer. Van Der Beek had made peace with this career trajectory. “I had an agent who called me ‘a character actor trapped in a leading man’s body’, which to me was the highest compliment of all, because those are the guys I love watching,’” he said.
Van Der Beek came across as an all-around good guy, and Dawson was a good guy too. Rewatching Dawson’s Creek (the full series is available to stream in the UK on ITVX) takes you back to a more innocent time. Capeside, Massachusetts was an idyll, and the show dealt with love and sex and relationships in a way that seems positively quaint today. These were the days before Snapchat selfies and lip filler. The worst crime these characters committed was using 30 words when three would have sufficed.
And Van Der Beek, while recognising how important the show was to its fans, never took himself too seriously. He once recorded a video for the comedy site Funny Or Die. “Hello, men. My name is James Van Der Beek, and I’m sorry,” he began.
“For years, I played sensitive do-gooder, Dawson Leery, on Dawson’s Creek. Now, you may not have watched the show, but your girlfriend did, and for years, she’s been secretly comparing you to a very unrealistic standard.
“You see, Dawson was sweet, kind, loving, eloquent, generous and romantic. He never made a move and always apologised, whether it was his fault or not.”
Men like this – teenage boys like this – don’t really exist. Which is why we should treasure Dawson all the more.