Revelations and Regrets From the 'Dawson's Creek' Writers' Room Reunion

The Austin-based ATX Television Festival, now in its fourth year, hosted its first writers’ room reunion on Saturday, bringing together some of the brightest talent from The WB’s teen drama Dawson’s Creek.

Creator Kevin Williamson was joined on the Paramount stage by co-showrunner Paul Stupin (Switched at Birth), Jenny Bicks (Sex and the City), hometown favorite Rob Thomas (Veronica Mars), Gina Fattore (Gilmore Girls), and Anna Fricke (Being Human), with Vampire Diaries EP/ride-or-die Pacey fan Julie Plec serving as moderator of a lively conversation that went deep into the writers’ hive of the show that put The WB on the map.

The affectionate bunch, the majority of whom cut their teeth in Capeside, reminisced about their finest highs and most surreal lows (Eve!), and dished about the divisive finale whose sting is still felt today for diehard Dawson fans.

Williamson always knew the character Jack McPhee was gay. Growing up a gay kid in a small creekside town, Williamson in many ways conceived of the show as an autobiographical coming-of-age story. So while the story kicks off describing the starry-eyed friendship between a Spielberg-obsessed boy and a devoted, bookish girl, he purposefully gave them the masculine names of Dawson and Joey.

Jack, who was played by Kerr Smith, was finally his chance to tell a realistic teenager’s coming-out story. “I always knew I wanted Jack to come out of the closet, but I didn’t tell anybody,” he said. “I didn’t even tell [the actor].” In Season 3, audiences were treated to the first male gay kiss on network television — though the network hovered overhead, demanding distance in the shot and being firm about the number of seconds the camera was allowed to linger on the young men.

Jen had to die. “They had dealt with every issue under the sun,” said Williamson, “except for the death of someone in their circle. Dealing with death is one more coming-of-age, and this was a coming-of-age story. And when you start to realize how precious life is, that is when you start to make decisions. And that is what forced Joey to make a decision.” Plec, a true fangirl, started fanning her eyes. “And then when Grams says, 'I’ll see you soon!’”

Veronica Mars loved Paula Cole, too. Thomas, whose first TV writing job was under Williamson, said he paid homage to his roots on his next gig by putting the ubiquitous Dawson’s Creek theme song into a scene on Veronica Mars. “It was my little shout-out,” says Thomas. “She was very angsty, and she sat and played songs to underline her feelings, and she went straight to the Paula Cole.”

Regrets, they’ve had a few. “So… Eve?” said Plec, as she invited the writers to share their best “Oops” moments in the writers’ room. “Who’s Eve?” joked Williamson. Turns out nobody really knew, despite the Season 3 arc involving Jen’s loose, manipulative sister (Brittany Daniel).

Williamson, who left the show after the second season, remembers watching the Season 3 premiere, in which Eve goes down on an enraptured Dawson on a boat, and turning off the television in disgust. “I sat in my bedroom and sobbed,” he said. “These are not my characters anymore.”

Fattore, who was on her first year of the show, said she wished she’d had the courage at the time to say the whole storyline was a terrible idea, but you can succumb to groupthink in a writers’ room. “But I never wrote Eve!” she said. Eventually, Eve unceremoniously disappeared, and the season rebounded when the writers doubled down on the building romance of Joey and Pacey.

Another regret! Pacey as, of all things, a stockbroker in the Boston years. “The commitment was, Pacey wouldn’t go to college,” explained Fattore. “We were really into that movie Boiler Room at the time.”

Another regret! Dawson’s father dies while eating an ice cream cone. “The dad’s death is not one of the ones I’m more proud of,” said Stupin with a laugh. “He’s driving, licking an ice cream cone, and he licks too hard, and it falls down beneath the dashboard, and he makes the mistake of going down to get it.”

The finale! When the network brought Williamson back to write a two-hour series finale, he came in expecting Joey to end up with Dawson. He wrote the first hour of the special as if Joey ended up with Dawson. It wasn’t until halfway through the script he started waffling.

“Everyday, you would say to me, 'Daws or Pacey?’” remembered Plec. Williamson said he ultimately made the decision for Joey to choose Pacey because, in that way, everyone got what they most wanted in the finale. Dawson became a filmmaker (“His one true love was Spielberg!”), and Pacey grew into and accepted himself as a man worthy of the love of someone like Joey.

“We find our soulmates in our best friends,” said Williamson, who said the three main characters formed a triangle of connection. “It’s not always romantic love.” That said, he laughed, “My mother went to her grave hating me for making that choice.”