Katie Holmes Objected to Original Dawson’s Creek Ending: ‘She Wanted It to Be Pacey,’ EP Says
Dawson’s Creek leading lady Katie Holmes had very strong feelings about who Joey Potter should end up with in the show’s series finale, the new book Freaks, Gleeks, and Dawson’s Creek: How 7 Teen Shows Transformed Television (shop Amazon and Wal-mart) reveals.
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After departing the iconic WB drama following Season 2, creator Kevin Williamson returned to pen the series ender, and he had a clear vision for how the show’s infamous love triangle would wrap up: “I was a Dawson/Joey diehard. It was always going to be Dawson and Joey,” Williamson, who saw the pair as soulmates, told Entertainment Weekly in 2018. “I don’t care how romantic things got between Joey and Pacey. It was going to be Dawson and Joey, always. Until I started writing it. And then once I started, I even wrote it Dawson and Joey.”
But Holmes was not a fan of the idea of concluding the teen soap with her character and pal/ex-boyfriend Dawson as a romantic couple, author Thea Glassman’s book claims.
“Katie freaked out. ‘I don’t want to end up with Dawson,'” Tom Kapinos, who served as a showrunner on Dawson’s Creek, recalls Holmes saying. “So it got replotted, or rewritten.”
Executive producer Paul Stupin shares a similar recollection in the book, noting that Williamson wrote the first hour of the series finale, which “if you kind of watch it, it leads you to think Dawson [is The One], and then I think Katie kind of did weigh in and wanted it to be Pacey.”
Holmes isn’t the only cast member who advocated for the fan-favorite couple to reunite: Last year, star Joshua Jackson told EW that he stepped in on Pacey and Joey’s behalf when it appeared that she was going to choose Dawson.
“I was like ‘Hell no! No. No. No. That’s not gonna work for me,'” the actor said. “I had a whole conversation with Kevin [Williamson] about this. Like, ‘Look, I get it. This is the idea that you had in your head, but I’m just gonna ask you to watch the tale of the tape, and this is the more interesting end for these characters.'”
Holmes and Jackson, ultimately, got their way: Joey and Pacey got back together and were living in New York in the show’s final moments, while Dawson was in Los Angeles, about to meet his idol Steven Spielberg. Williamson admitted to EW that after writing that particular ending, “I went, ‘Boy, this feels right.'”
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