The death of James Van Der Beek was a gut punch to the WB generation. The actor died on Wednesday at the age of 48 after a multi-year battle with colorectal cancer. The news of his passing undoubtedly inspired thousands, if not millions, of people to press play on Dawson’s Creek, the ’90s teen drama Van Der Beek famously starred in. And when they did, Paula Cole crooning, “I don’t want to wait for our lives to be over,” at the start of the show’s opening credits no doubt hit so much harder.
It was expected that all of the headlines about Van Der Beek’s death would include Dawson’s Creek. It is arguably the seminal teen drama of the late ’90s and early 2000s, and Van Der Beek was at the center of that as the eponymous precocious aspiring filmmaker Dawson Leery. Dawson’s on-again/off-again romance with his best friend and neighbor Joey Potter (Katie Holmes) is the stuff of teen-romance legend. The two of them climbing into each other’s windows and making romantic declarations that feel like an SAT study guide are cemented in pop-culture memory.
As a character, Dawson could be frustrating. He was self-righteous and stubborn to the point of being a bully at times. In retrospect, Van Der Beek did an incredibly adept job at portraying a New England upper-middle-class white teen untouched by scandal, tragedy, or hardship until his sophomore year of high school. Dawson matured over the course of the series, but the show still ended with him being one of the most famous examples of a titular character failing to get the girl.
The actor continued a teen-heartthrob trajectory during and immediately post-Creek, with roles in Varsity Blues and the underrated Rules Of Attraction. But even in the early aughts, when the sheen of fame from Dawson’s Creek was still shiny, Van Der Beek proved he was self-aware and unafraid of making himself the butt of a joke. He played Dawson Leery in 2000’s Scary Movie, poking fun at his character’s penchant for climbing in and out of his girlfriend’s bedroom window. He followed that by portraying a satirized version of himself in 2001’s Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back. A few years later, he returned to the WB (reimagined as The CW by then) to play Adam Reese, the eccentric director who seemed straight out of Dawson Leery’s nightmares on One Tree Hill.
In 2011, Van Der Beek took things a step further by collaborating with Funny Or Die on “VanDerWeek,” a Dawson-centric follow-up to the site’s viral “Pacey-Con” from the year before. The rise of Tumblr and social media at this point in internet history had made Dawson’s ugly crying face when Joey left him for his other best friend Pacey (Joshua Jackson) in Creek‘s season-three finale a perennial reaction meme. More self-conscious actors would have shied away from the unflattering image, but Van Der Beek leaned into the viral moment and worked with Funny Or Die to take control of the narrative. And his willingness to embrace the absurdity set him up for a career-changing role.
VanDerWeek directly led to the actor being cast as a warped version of himself in the ABC sitcom Don’t Trust The B— In Apartment 23, according to Van Der Beek in a 2017 IndieWire interview. For two seasons, he played himself as a philandering actor making terrible professional decisions while still riding the high of late-’90s teen-icon status. The sitcom may have been short-lived, but the metaness showed that Van Der Beek wasn’t afraid to swing for the fences. He understood how the world saw him, and he was willing to play with that and make it work for him. That series proved that Van Der Beek wasn’t just a dude with a viral ugly crying face.
He kept the meta train rolling with What Would Diplo Do? in 2017. The actor added showrunner and writer to his resume for the five-episode parodic comedy in which he played the famous DJ. It was another weird experiment and a laugh-out-loud commentary on the absurdity of celebrity. Once again, the guy who became a household name playing one of the most strait-laced TV leads of all time proved he was the one to call when you wanted to color outside the creative lines.
What makes Van Der Beek’s post-Dawson’s Creek career so interesting is that it didn’t just differ from his most well-known role but also from his persona. He joined season 28 of Dancing With The Stars and introduced America to his wife, Kimberly, and children, with the show portraying him as a humble and committed family man.
After his cancer diagnosis in 2023, the actor continued to work. Two of his final credits saw him play a role closer to his actual dad persona in Tubi’s Sidelined teen-romance films, but even that came with an unexpected wink. The Gen Z and Alpha target audience for Sidelined and its sequel may not be aware of Van Der Beek’s iconic delivery of “I don’t want your life” in Varsity Blues, but their Gen X and millennial parents can appreciate the irony of the actor playing a father so obsessed with his son’s potential football career that he’s oblivious to his kid’s actual dreams.
Dawson Leery will always be remembered as the guy who told Joey Potter not to go to Paris and sobbed on a pier when she ditched him for Pacey Witter. And the character’s contorted face will be a lasting image in pop culture. But James Van Der Beek’s legacy speaks well beyond that image (and to a good amount of self-deprecation). He’s forever the face of ’90s teen angst, but he should be remembered for much more.
Megan Vick is a contributor to The A.V. Club.
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