‘Dawson’s Creek’ creator makes shocking confession about series: ‘I was so scared’
Kevin Williamson recently revealed that he did not spend years planning Dawson’s Creek.
For those unaware, Dawson’s Creek is an American teen drama television series about the lives of a close-knit group of friends in the fictional town of Capeside, Massachusetts, beginning in high school and continuing into college. The series debuted on January 20, 1998, and concluded on May 14, 2003, after six seasons.
Kerr Smith, who played the role of Jack McPhee in the series, published his memoir, I Don’t Wanna Wait: My Life on Dawson’s Creek, in which he talked about the show’s creator Williamson.
In his book, Smith stated that the idea for the WB series came to their mind in 1995 when Paul Stupin, who later served as the executive producer of Dawson’s Creek, read Variety’s article about Williamson.
Reflecting on the past with Smith, Stupin said, “[It was] some sort of suspense-mystery thriller kind of thing,” which was titled Scary Movie at the time.
“Some instinct of mine told me to track down and read the script that eventually became Scream. That original title of Scary Movie, as we all now know, was used several years later for a whole series of movies spoofing Scream.”
“You think about these little moments along the way… If I had not read Variety that morning, if I had decided to take the day off… These little turning points seem so random, but the five minutes when I discovered that little blurb on Kevin… changed my life,” Stupin explained.
The American film producer then had a meeting with Williamson at Fox Studios, where they shared two ideas; one was a teen drama inspired by Party of Five and the other was a younger version of The X-Files. When Stupin asked the 61-year-old American screenwriter and filmmaker about his own ideas, he spilled everything that was cooking in his mind and that’s how Dawson’s Creek was created.
“I was so scared not to have an idea… I made up Dawson’s Creek on the spot! I used to make movies in my backyard the same way I had read that Steven Spielberg filmed home movies in his backyard and cast all of his friends. Kind of like The Fabelmans. So I told Paul about shooting horror films in my backyard and around my town. I was just riffing,” Williamson recalled.
