Nearly 30 years after Dawson’s Creek premiered, cast alum Busy Philipps recently admitted that one particular storyline did not age well.
Although the actress debuted as Pacey’s (Joshua Jackson) future girlfriend Audrey on Season 5 in 2001, she explained why she played a different character during last month’s live reading of the pilot episode benefitting F Cancer, following co-star James Van Der Beek‘s Stage 3 colorectal cancer diagnosis.
“They’re not even together [in the pilot],” Philipps told People. “He’s going to have a really insanely inappropriate relationship with a teacher, which by the way, is so wild. And just goes to show you culturally how much we have changed for the better, right?”
During the reading at Richard Rodgers Theatre in New York City, Philipps read the part of Tamara Jacobs (originally played by Leann Hunley in the 1998 pilot), the 36-year old English teacher who takes her 15-year old student Pacey’s virginity in the first episode.
“Kevin Williamson didn’t write the part of Audrey, he wasn’t a part of that,” Philipps noted. “He was already long gone from the show when they went to college, and my character was added.”
Philipps added, “After the [charity reading], I said, ‘Well, Kevin, I guess you did write a part for me on Dawson’s Creek. You just didn’t know that it would take 20 years for me to be the right age to play it.’”
Although Van Der Beek dropped out of the event at the last minute due to stomach viruses, it reunited co-stars Philipps, Jackson, Michelle Williams, Katie Holmes, Mary Beth Peil, John Wesley Shipp, Mary-Margaret Humes, Nina Repeta, Kerr Smith and Meredith Monroe.
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