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Flash back to May: Shortly after they all first met, Dawson's Creek stars Katie Holmes and Michelle Williams pulled a prank on fellow actors James Van Der Beek and Joshua Jackson.
At the Howard Johnson's in Wilmington, North Carolina, where the hormone-heavy drama is filmed, they locked their male costars out of their room, leaving them standing in the hall, clad only in their boxers. "We just terrorized them," Williams says. "They didn't want to go into the lobby because they were only in their underwear."
Fast-forward a few months: The cast routinely engages in some major discourse. Politics. Religion. Welfare reform. "Nasty arguments," Williams calls them. "But we all can hold our own."
The foursome's bounce between youthful kidding and adult conversation mirrors the dynamics on Dawson's Creek (WB, Tuesdays, 9 P.M./ET), the show in which kids talk like adults, act like adults, even sleep with adults. Which may be why the Matchbox 20 crowd is watching.
Once again, creator Kevin Williamson has captured the self-aware, media-savvy character of this age group, who in the last year flocked to cineplexes everywhere to his trio of hits: "Scream," "I Know What You Did Last Summer" and "Scream 2."
With that karma, Dawson's Creek seems poised to inherit the 90210/Melrose Place/Party of Five mantle as the show of the moment, the can't-miss series destined to launch thousands of CD soundtrack sales, teen-magazine covers and frenzied shopping-mall appearances.
In its first four weeks the drama hovered around a 5.2 rating, reaching more than 5 million homes. Paltry by major network standards but impressive for the WB, placing the show ahead of the hot Buffy the Vampire Slayer, its lead-in on the network's new Tuesday-night schedule. More impressive: According to the Nielsens, the show is No. 1 among girls 12 to 17 and No. 4 among teens overall. "So far, so good," says Garth Ancier, the WB's president of entertainment.
No one can say all this has happened by chance. Producers cast four well-clothed, well-groomed actors. There's Van Der Beek, 20, as aspiring 15-year-old filmmaker Dawson Leery, the object of a triangle involving his childhood pal Joey Potter (Holmes, 19) and the girl-next-door-with-a-past, Jennifer Lindley (Williams, 17). Rounding out the foursome is Dawson's best friend and fellow video-store clerk Pacey Witter (Jackson, 19), unable to score with women his own age but succeeding with his English teacher (Leann Hunley), more than 20 years his senior.
Backed by a $3 million marketing push, Dawson's Creek was generating word of mouth long before its January debut. A promotional tape passed around to the press last summer created a great deal of buzz for its risqué content: namely, the fact that Dawson and Joey sleep in the same bed (platonically), as do Pacey and his teacher (definitely not platonically).
By December, the series was a marketing event, with posters on buses, billboards at major intersections and trailers in theaters. J. Crew announced that it would be the show's "official wardrobe provider" and featured the cast of then unknowns in its winter-spring catalog. By January, promos were running in Blockbuster video stores to the tune of Paula Cole's "I Don't Want to Wait," repeated so often that some were calling it the Dawson's Creek theme. Luckily for WB executives, Cole gave final permission to use the song for the show's title sequence only days before its debut.
Even in the relative isolation of Wilmington, a historic Southern town, the trappings of celebrity are starting to crop up. The four young actors are now recognized on the street (all but Jackson have hired personal publicists). Their pictures have popped up on the wall of a local coffee shop. And some cast members have started acquiring things, such as new cars. "I can buy nicer gifts for people," Holmes says. "But it is not like we are going overboard and shopping all the time. I think we have good heads on our shoulders."
While Wilmington has become a movie and TV production center (for scenes inside the high school, the show uses an old Matlock set), it's hardly Hollywood, and almost all the crew is made up of locals. On the set back in December, Holmes was at the center of an upcoming episode in which her character enters the Miss Windjammer Pageant and sings a rendition of "On My Own," from "Les Misérables." A glittering group of extras in sequined gowns crowded a stage, all of them forcing smiles. Then the mood took an irreverent turn as both male and female crew members started trying on the winner's crown.
One almost expects this spectacle to turn into the bloody prom scene from "Carrie," what with Williamson's pedigree of slasher movies. Dawson's Creek is his chance to prove he can write more than horror and, likewise, that teens will watch more than gore. "You know, I think it is the 16- and 17-year-olds who we learn from," says the 32-year-old Williamson. "If you look at Dawson's Creek, it is the adult figures who learn from the kids, who are smarter than we give them credit for. And they are smarter than they have ever been."
Later on the set, Jackson's Pacey comes onstage to rail against the concept of beauty contests, dressed in a tuxedo and blue-and-white face paint, à la Mel Gibson in "Braveheart." Perhaps no other series has featured so many references to movies and TV; in the premiere alone there were 46, including 16 about Steven Spielberg and his movies. In fact, one episode this month features a parody of Williamson's own "Scream," itself an homage to horror movies. "This is the way I write," Williamson says. "But it is not for the sake of making a reference. I try to make sure it drives the story forward. When [the characters talk about] Spielberg, they are not just talking about Spielberg. They are talking about how he had to outgrow his Peter Pan syndrome. Which reflects on Dawson having to change his life and make a decision to face reality."
No one argues that today's kids, weaned on MTV, Nick at Nite and 24-hour news, are media savvy, but critics have derided the show's racy dialogue. Take what Pacey told his teacher the first time she spurned his advances: "You know, lady, I'm the best sex you've never had." Admits Ancier: "There's no 15-year-old in America who would say that. But that's part of the fun of the show."
"Yeah," adds Williamson, "I think it is not so much how teenagers are but how teenagers would like to be seen, as opposed to being talked down to." Still, at a press conference in Pasadena, California, last summer, critics hounded the cast about the show's matter-of-fact talk about sex, right down to the size of private parts. Jackson says he actually got scolded by WB executives for his quip to the group: "Don't worry, it's not like we're all having group orgies."
To be sure, the WB has shown some restraint. Williamson tried to get the word masturbate into the pilot; it was rejected. Finally, he says, "we came up with walk the dog. Now we use it all the time. Everyone knows what it means." Ironically, Ancier says that when the show debuted, the WB got few complaints about language. The 100 or so viewer calls were directed toward temporary technical problems with closed-captioning.
"People were going on about all the sex in the show," Van Der Beek says. "What do you mean? How many people had sex in the pilot? But do 15-year-olds talk about sex? I mean, are they thinking about it? Yeah. We are not giving these kids any ideas, but what we do is talk about these issues. I think we do it really responsibly."
But enough of this serious stuff. Back on the set, the pranks haven't ended; they've just gotten more complex. Williams has asked the show's effects supervisor how to attach a metal bar under Jackson's new Chevy truck so it will continually emit a mysterious clicking noise.
She says, grinning devilishly, "It'll drive him crazy."
