Joshua Jackson Was Initially Nervous When A ‘Mind-Blowing’ ‘Dawson’s Creek’ Clip Went Viral

Katie Holmes has said that she wouldn’t be interested in a Dawson’s Creek reboot because “if you put our mid-40s selves together on a couch now, with our creaking backs, it might shock people.” I tend to agree with her — let the past die, etc. — unless it’s a 10-episode limited series about this scene.

“This shot in Dawsons’s Creek is blowing my mind,” director Jay Cheel tweeted, along with a clip from a season one episode where Pacey (played by Joshua Jackson) gets blasted in the face by a basketball thrown by Dawson (James Van Der Beek). That’s good for a view or two. But the reason I’ve rewatched the scene 10 times… make it 11 times is because the ball, after hitting Pacey in the kisser, flies back towards the camera, then goes bouncing off into the distance. To recap: face, camera, bye bye basketball.

The clip has over 3 million views, and when it first went viral, Jackson was worried. “They told me on set. I was trending on Twitter and I got really nervous for a second,” the Fatal Attractions star tweeted. When someone suggested that digital trickery was involved, Jackson replied, “Incorrect. This was 199(7?) we were definitely not using cgi.”

The WB in the mid-1990s was the real golden age of TV.