“Dawson’s Creek” will be without its titular star when cast members reunite Monday evening to commemorate the show that put many of them on Hollywood’s map in the early aughts.
After months of planning and anticipation, actor James Van Der Beek, protagonist of the WB teen drama series that ran from 1998 to 2003, said Sunday he was “gutted” to be sidelined by health issues and unable to attend.
“This is the evening I’d been looking forward to MOST since my angel Michelle Williams said she was putting it together, way back in January,” he wrote on Instagram. “So you can imagine how gutted I was when two stomach viruses conspired to knock me out of commission and keep me grounded at the worst possible moment.”
Van Der Beek, 48, revealed last November that he had stage 3 colorectal cancer. He had kept the diagnosis private after the illness was detected via colonoscopy in August 2023, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
“There’s reason for optimism, and I’m feeling good,” he told People last year when he went public.
Van Der Beek did not mention cancer in his Instagram message, though his absence would be especially keen given that the evening is a charity event. At Monday’s performance, original cast members Katie Holmes, Joshua Jackson, Mary Beth Peil, John Wesley Shipp, Mary-Margaret Humes, Nina Repeta, Kerr Smith, Meredith Monroe and Busy Philipps will converge at New York City’s Richard Rodgers Theater to live-read the pilot episode onstage.
Proceeds will go to Van Der Beek, who has resorted to selling movie memorabilia to fund his treatment, and to the group FCancer. His wife, Kimberly, and their six children are attending at his urging.
“Despite every effort… I won’t get to be there,” Van Der Beek wrote. “I won’t get to stand on that stage and thank every soul in the theater for showing up for me, and against cancer, when I needed it most.”
There was one silver lining to dent his disappointment and perhaps net him some “cool dad” cred with his kids.
“But I DO have an understudy,” Van Der Beek said. Dawson, he announced, “will be played by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Can’t believe I just got to type that.”
He ended by exhorting everyone to “please enjoy all the love in that room. Shine some on my family. I will be beaming and receiving from afar in a bed in Austin.”