Entertainment Weekly
January 8, 1998
by Bruce Fretts
With his titillating new TV soap, Scream scribe Kevin Williamson takes a stab at (eek!) the
sex lives of the really young and restless
On a postcard-perfect Wilmington, N.C., dock, the new WB drama Dawson's Creek shoots a
scene that could have been lifted out of any generic teen soap: Tenth grader Pacey is getting dumped
by his girlfriend, Tamara. Pacey lost his virginity to her, then blabbed about it to his pal Dawson in
the boys' room, unaware that a gossipy classmate could overhear. Now Tamara's reputation is
ruined!
One fact sets this scene apart from your average Saved by the 90210, though: Tamara is Pacey's
40ish high school teacher. "For lack of a better word, it's gonna shock the s--- out of people when I
sleep with my English teacher," predicts 19-year-old Joshua Jackson (The Mighty Ducks), who
plays Pacey, of the envelope-pushing plotline.
Perhaps it's no surprise that the already heavily publicized Dawson's Creek comes from the twisted
mind of Kevin Williamson, who's become Hollywood's scribe du jour by shocking the
you-know-what out of people with back-to-back slash hits: Scream, I Know What You Did Last
Summer, and Scream 2. Only this time, Williamson's adolescents are being split open figuratively, as
the coming-of-age drama examines what the Clearasil set is thinking and talking about: sex and sex,
respectively (in the pilot, topics of discussion include the correlation between finger length and genital
size).
Dawson's Creek stars James Van Der Beek (think Ethan Hawke with better hygiene) as Dawson
Leery, a 15-year-old aspiring Spielberg whose lifelong platonic friendship with Joey (The Ice
Storm's Katie Holmes) turns complicated when they hit puberty: The first scene finds them debating
whether it's still okay to sleep in the same bed. Their lives get more confusing when Dawson
develops a crush on new kid in town Jen (Species' Michelle Williams), and Joey grows jealous. "I
know I'm going to get hate mail," laments Williams, 17, of her other-girl character. "But I'm trying my
damnedest to make people like me."
Poison-pen letters may be sent for another reason, since Dawson's Creek is the frankest depiction
of teenage sexuality ever seen on the small screen. ("Think she's a virgin?" Pacey asks Dawson after
they meet Jen. "You want to nail her?") But, argues Van Der Beek, 20, "we deal with the issues
responsibly."
"Don's look for any moral lessons, however. "There's nothing preachy about it," promises
Williamson, 32. "The moment anyone says anything that sounds like a message, the [characters]
discard it. They go, 'So what did we learn from this 90210 moment?' "
Such amorality (atheist Jen sasses her devout grandma, "I'll go to church when you say the word
penis!") seems destined to rankle the right wing, but The WB isn't scared. "I invite boycotts,"
proclaims exec veep for programming Susanne Daniels. "I always think about what happened to
Married...With Children. The boycott some woman tried to start attracted more attention to the
show than it ever would've gotten otherwise."
The only controversy so far erupted among bluenosed TV critics after the network announced its
plans to air the show during the "family hour" of 8 to 9 p.m. Choosing to nip that scandal in the bud,
The WB shuffled it to the more adult hour of 9 to 10 p.m., slotting it after the equally hip sophomore
hit Buffy the Vampire Slayer on a new Tuesday-night schedule beginning Jan. 20. Williamson
applauds the shift: "I don't want to be limited in what I can do, and 9 o'clock gives me more
freedom."
The startlingly mature dialogue will set Dawson's Creek apart, but some are already questioning the
verisimilitude of the vocabulary. "These kids talk like they've had 10 years of therapy," admits
Williamson. Still, the stars say their repartee won't go over teens' heads. "It's a little heightened, but
they'll understand it," says Holmes, 18. "Maybe they'll learn a few new words." ("Katie learned a
new word from the makeup person: fellatio," reports Jackson. "Eighteen years of Catholic schools
down the toilet after three weeks on Dawson's Creek.")
Like both Screams, the show also includes enough in-jokes and pop-culture references to make
Quentin Tarantino's head explode. Dawson, for example, confesses that he pleasures himself every
morning while watching Katie Couric. "I hope she takes it all in good fun," says Williamson. "I love
Katie. It's my dream to go on Today and show that clip."
A passion for the perky morning hostess isn't the drama's only autobiographical element. Williamson
grew up in North Carolina near the real Dawson's Creek and based the series on his adolescent
memories. He originally pitched the pilot to Fox in 1994, but the network felt it was too similar to the
then-struggling Party of Five. When he took his project to The WB, the new snapped it up.
Of course, the downside to being on a fledging network is that the initial audience is bound to be
microscopic. "We're prepared for it," says Williamson. "The joke around here is 'My God, we're
going to debut at No. 90 -- that'll be great!' "
But with a marketing campaign that includes a J. Crew tie-in (the January college catalog features the
fresh-faced cast) and a possible soundtrack (No Doubt and Sheryl Crow are heard in the pilot),
Dawson's Creek hopes to build beyond the pubescent cult. And by airing on The WB, "we can
avoid My So-Called Life-itis," explains Jackson, citing the critically admired teen-angst drama that
failed to win a big enough viewership to stave off cancellation by ABC.
The WB would rather follow the model of Party of Five, which was given time to grow by Fox and
now commands a fiercely loyal (and demographically to-die-for) audience. In fact, observes the
net's admittedly biased Daniels, "Dawson's Creek has the potential to have a greater draw than
Party of Five because it's not as dark."
If that happens, the cast could easily be the next wave in the current flood of teen idols, a prospect
that "scares us all to death," says Williams. "This might sound snobbish," sniffs Van Der Beek, "but I
don't aspire to be on the cover of Teen Beat."
Too late. Dawson's Creek covers are already planned for YM, Seventeen, and Teen People, and
Teen Beat can't be far behind. At least the cast can take comfort in their location -- almost 3,000
miles from the Hollywood hype machine, in Wilmington (which doesn't even have its own WB
affiliate yet). "You can't do auditions on the weekends here," says Holmes, who nonetheless just
managed to land the lead in the MGM thriller Disturbing Behavior. "And it forces the cast to bond
because we don't know anyone else." In fact, Jackson and Van Der Beek share a pad, and their
female costars live within a few blocks.
Their show's insanely busy creator is another story. Williamson is based, by necessity, in Los
Angeles. He recently renegotiated his Miramax deal; the $20 million pact not includes new TV
products as well as a third Scream and his big-screen directorial debut, Killing Mrs. Tingle. That
Dawson's Creek isn't included in the package (it's produced by Columbia TriStar) worries the cast.
"I'd like to chain Kevin to a bedpost in Wilmington so he never, ever leaves," says Williams.
Williamson is contractually obligated to work only on the first 22 episodes (The WB ordered 13 for
this season), but he's got news for anyone who expects him to abandon the show after that. "I ain't
ever leavin' Dawson's Creek," he declares, his gentle Southern accent slipping through. "It's too
personal. I might have to put it more at arm's length, but I'll never be too far from it." Adds Jackson:
"He keeps trying to pull back, and then you read the revisions of the scripts, and he's all over it."
Or, as one of Williamson's cinematically savvy teens might put it, á la Al Pacino's Godfather: Every
time he thinks he's out, they pull him back in.
