NEW YORK — On a warm Saturday afternoon at the Tribeca Festival last week, hundreds of attendees packed into a theater, milling around near the red carpet and chatting before the start of the movie premiere. Then a voice cut through the noise with the same urgent tone that a Secret Service agent might use to alert that the president is in route.
“Joshua Jackson and Katie Holmes, Joshua Jackson and Katie Holmes,” a woman reported to everyone nearby. Heads whirled, and sure enough, there they were: Holding hands, the stars strolled by the crowd and headed toward the photographers on the carpet.
The actors — in attendance to screen their new movie, the romantic dramedy “Happy Hours” — beamed for the cameras. This included the countless iPhone screens that fans lifted up behind the roped-off area as they tried to catch the pair who captured their hearts decades ago as the tortured soulmates Pacey and Joey on the teen phenomenon “Dawson’s Creek,” which aired from 1998 to 2003.
“That’s my childhood crush right there,” a man commented. Suddenly, ear-shattering screams pierced the air. When this reporter asked some taller patrons what happened, a woman explained that Jackson had just waved. “Yeah,” she said, sounding sheepish. “It’s that exciting.”
A few hours earlier, blocks away, another movie premiered at the festival: “Doc Meets World,” a documentary following three stars of ABC’s fan-favorite ’90s sitcom “Boy Meets World” (Danielle Fishel, Will Friedle and Rider Strong, now all in their mid- to late 40s), whose popular rewatch podcast spurred a touring variety show. During the Q&A portion of the screening, the line of viewers who wanted to talk to the trio stretched down the theater.
“I’m going to cry, I don’t even know how to start this,” said one fan, a stand-up comedian who had flown in from Beijing and said that he learned how to land a punch line by watching Friedle. One woman read a pre-written statement that expressed gratitude toward the cast for being her safe haven during her traumatic childhood: “There are television shows that entertain us and then there are television shows that become part of who we are.”
At this point, no one should be surprised by the intense reactions to particularly beloved ’90s TV series, evidenced by the lengthy list of reboots, revivals, reunions and rewatch podcasts that have populated our culture in recent years. These shows are embedded in the minds and souls of adults as they cling to childhood comforts in an increasingly chaotic world. But that day at the festival inadvertently provided a stark example of the different ways that stars approach this nostalgia craze that shows no sign of ending — the actors have the choice to lightly allude to their past projects, or maintain these shows as a core part of their identity.
Whatever they decide, the celebrities are well-aware of the hold they have on fans. Cara Cusumano, the Tribeca Festival director and senior vice president of programming, said that these millennial-core movie premieres airing back-to-back was simply a coincidence. However, as a child of the ’90s herself, “certainly those kind of stories and characters and figures speak to me.”
“We probably don’t think about it as nostalgia. We think about it more as community and fandom,” Cusumano told The Washington Post. Tribeca was an early adopter of including TV shows in the festival lineup, she said, and the organizers recognized the value in making TV a communal viewing experience and the bonds that can form “when you can get everybody into a real brick-and-mortar room together.”
At the “Happy Hours” premiere, the stars did not utter the words “Dawson’s” or “creek.” Still, the memories of the WB high school drama loomed large.
Jackson played Pacey, the wisecracking sidekick to leading man Dawson (the late James Van Der Beek), while Holmes was Joey, the wise-beyond-her-years girl next door. An unlikely pair at first, Jackson and Holmes’s captivating on-screen chemistry only grew stronger over the seasons. While both went on to star in many other TV shows and movies — and Holmes’s six-year marriage to Tom Cruise in the early 2000s made her a global sensation — fans still think about them as the “Dawson’s Creek” couple.
That spark remains, evident by the pair’s easy rapport in “Happy Hours,” written and directed by Holmes. The film centers on Holmes, 47, and Jackson, 48, as a photographer and travel writer, respectively, who dated as teenagers in New York; decades after their devastating breakup, they unexpectedly reunite during a photo shoot in the city.
Seeing the pair on-screen again was surreal, and the audience reacted accordingly. (“The things those two do to millennials should be studied,” the “Who? Weekly” podcast noted this week.) During the first scene where the characters make intense eye contact, someone yelled, “Oh yeah!”
Cusumano moderated the Q&A with the cast after the screening. “Katie and Joshua, you’ve worked together before,” she said as she started to ask whether their previous chemistry helped them craft these new roles. The audience interrupted into knowing laughter before she could even get to the question.
“I wanted to be really careful to not make it about everything that they have done before, and have it really be focused on this screening and building with these characters,” Cusumano later told The Post. “But then one of the cast members was like, ‘Joey and Pacey forever.’ And I’m like, ‘Okay, all bets are off then!’”
During the Q&A, actress Eden Espinosa said that she signed on because it meant that she got to share a scene with Holmes. “Team Pacey and Joey!” she added, and received a huge cheer. Holmes and Jackson were good-natured through it all, and tried to articulate how they melded the past and the present without letting the past overwhelm everything.
“The challenge was … letting ourselves be different than we were, and taking on these new characters and seeing if they fit. So I didn’t — we weren’t depending on — you know, built-in anything. We just — ” Holmes paused as the crowd cracked up, and she looked at Jackson. “Maybe you were, I wasn’t!”
They both smiled. “No, I think … look,” Jackson said, grasping for words. The audience laughed again. “That thing that we did was, for both of us, a very special time in our lives. But we both had a chance to live an entire life since then.”
Jackson noted that it’s rare to know someone for so long that you like working with and who really understands you. “We’ve known each other for a minute,” he continued. “And for me, it wasn’t so much about relying on built-in chemistry. But it was this beautiful gift given to me by my friend to come back after all of these years and have a chance to play again. Because you just don’t get that in your life.”
While the idea of “Dawson’s Creek” gently hovered over “Happy Hours,” the premiere of “Doc Meets World” was an intensive dive back in time — and a look at what it’s like to spend your 40s exhaustively revisiting the work you did as a teenager.
“Boy Meets World,” which aired as part of ABC’s TGIF lineup from 1993 through 2000, broke out as an adored coming-of-age comedy. Ben Savage starred as Cory, just a kid trying to figure everything out, surrounded by his brother Eric (Friedle); his best friend Shawn (Strong); the love of his life Topanga (Fishel); and his prophetic teacher Mr. Feeny (Bill Daniels).
In 2022, Fishel, Friedle and Strong took a well-traveled route and launched a rewatch podcast, “Pod Meets World,” where they analyze each episode and interview former producers and castmates. The show garnered millions of downloads, leading to a tour where the trio traveled the country and reenacted scenes as their old characters and answered audience questions. They invited a camera crew to tag along, which eventually became “Doc Meets World.”
Onstage before the screening, filmmakers Zane Rubin and Chris Levitus said the root of the documentary was the three actors’ “extraordinary experiences” with fans on tour. The film showcases viewers talking about how much the show meant to them, teaching lessons about family and friendship in addition to being hilarious.
But the most poignant scenes involve Fishel, Friedle and Strong as they grapple with a range of emotions: Gratitude for the show that launched them to stardom; their complicated relationship with creator Michael Jacobs; feeling like they needed to distance themselves from the series; and then realizing that reminiscing about the show could be a new chapter of their careers. They aren’t afraid to be candid — for example, discussing how painful it is that Savage declined to participate in the podcast and has since blocked their phone numbers.
When the movie concluded, the three performed a version of their live show. Fishel let loose with Topanga’s interpretative dance from the first season. Strong slipped back into his character, Shawn, the bad boy with the heart of gold, and read a poem from his journal: “Sometimes it feels like the world simply can’t move on. Like no matter what I do, or how great I get, I’m still a teenager named Shawn.”
Friedle, who arrived dressed in one of Eric’s famous costumes, pretended to be a mystical figure who told Shawn about his future. One day, he said, there would be a podcast, a tour, a documentary about the tour and a book. (Yes, the trio has a book coming out this fall.) When Strong said that sounded like a lot, Friedle replied, “Yeah, well, right now there’s kind of an insatiable thirst for ’90s content, so …”
While delivered as a joke, it remains the reality. Even if the actors have mixed feelings about returning to the “Boy Meets World” universe again, there’s never been a better time to capitalize on how much people want to travel back with them. And sometimes, life just comes down to practicalities. During the Q&A, Strong explained that the reason he participated in the 2014 Disney spin-off “Girl Meets World” (after initially refusing) was that he was promised he could direct some episodes, and he wanted to get into the Directors Guild of America.
Ultimately, that’s what these actors have to decide. Although it might seem appealing to only vaguely acknowledge their past work, diving back in full throttle can also be satisfying, not to mention potentially lucrative.
In one scene in the documentary, Friedle, Fishel and Strong stand together at an event as grateful fan after grateful fan pose with them for pictures. The camera then pivots to a computer screen that scrolls through these hundreds of photos until they become a blur. Giving into the nostalgia of it all can be meaningful — but once you start, it also might never end.
The post Katie Holmes, Joshua Jackson and the continued power of ’90s nostalgia appeared first on Washington Post.
