Kerr Smith is looking inward in his new memoir, “I Don’t Want to Wait.” In the new book, available Tuesday, Nov. 10 , Smith details his experiences on “Dawson’s Creek,” including the process of finding out that his character, Jack McPhee, was going to come out as gay.
In the exclusive excerpt below, he details his conversations with Kevin Williamson and Greg Berlanti during filming, as well as the discussions in the years that followed. As seen below, the book also includes an interview with James Van Der Beek, conducted in 2025. Related Stories Disney Expected to Lay Off Thousands of Staffers in Biggest Round of Cuts This Year Disney and the NFL Launch Limited-Edition Mickey & Friends Merch Ahead of Super Bowl LXI
KERR : Greg—do you remember the night we met? I’ll never forget it. It was probably five or six episodes into season two when you and Kevin blew into town on the jet.
GREG : Yeah, I was down there with him when he was coming to tell you. Just to give some context—because I think it’s important— at that time, straight actors did not want to play gay. Back then, nine out of ten actors who were straight did not want to play gay parts. Even if they weren’t straight, nine out of ten male actors did not want to play gay parts. So, the fact that you were finding out after being hired was going to say a lot about who you were as a person, just in terms of how you responded. I don’t think people can understand the pressure most actors would have been under. As far as telling you, we were all thinking it was going to be a disaster… or at least, “Hmmm. I wonder how this is going to go …”
We were shooting in downtown Wilmington that day. Between shots, as they reset lights and turned cameras around, Kevin came up to me at video village, pulled me aside, and said …
KEVIN : “Kerr, let’s go get a cup of coffee.”
I immediately think, Holy shit, am I being fired?! Am I about to lose the best job I’ve ever had—six episodes in? Then I thought, Or does he want to make the character gay? I know that sounds insane, but in the back of my head, I had this idea because the “core four” were facets of Kevin’s personality, and there wasn’t a character on the show that represented his sexuality. “Let’s go get a cup of coffee.” It was a loaded moment, followed by me blurting out…
… as casually as I could with my heart pounding out of my chest. After a block or two of small talk—about the show, the shooting schedule, how things were back in LA—we wound up at this coffee place on Front Street, downtown. I ordered a caramel macchiato, and we found a table. For what felt like a week, we just sat there. Then Kevin looked me in the eye and said …
KEVIN : Kerr, we’re gonna go down a different avenue with Jack.
My head was spinning. I knew instinctively what he was talking about, but also it didn’t quite answer the question swirling in my head: Was I fired . . . or gay? Then Kevin looked me in the eye again—this is actually a kind of painful memory, even to this day—and said . . .
KEVIN : Look, we want this to be Jack. We want to have Jack make an impact as a teen gay character on prime time. We can do it with you, or we can find somebody else to do it, and we’ll just, ya know… figure out something else for Jack to do.
In that moment, I was pretty sure I knew what that meant: Do this, or I’ll create some other character who will and nice knowin’ you. To be honest, it hurt. This was my first really big prime time role—one of the best roles then on TV—and three months in, I was being asked to take on this huge responsibility; my character was about to go from likable new love interest to a guy that may not be accepted by a significant number of people. Then again, there was another group, one that skewed younger and more sympathetic, that would absolutely love Jack’s new direction. This could really help them.
Twenty-six years later, I got a little perspective when Kevin and I sat down again, and he offered his own recollections of that momentous day.
KEVIN : I was so nervous to tell you and, in a weird way, ask your permission, because if you had said no, that would have disrupted my entire plan. I mean, I was rocking and rolling with that story. And once I started talking to Greg and Julie about it, and Paul, we were all excited. So we were a little nervous that you would be like, “I don’t want to do that. That’s not what I signed up for.” Had that been your response, we would’ve had to do a lot of redeveloping.
I remember trying to hold it together, to be professional on the outside, while flipping out on the inside. According to Kevin’s memory… this wasn’t my best acting that day.
KEVIN : I could see the fear in your eyes. Like this was going to mean the end of your role, the end of your job. I don’t recall you being so concerned with the gay storyline. I remember you saying, “Once I come out of the closet and I have this great storyline. . . do I then go away?” I tried to assure you that this was not going to stop where we take Jack. “If this is where your character is going to go, you will be a part of this show forever.”
I took a breath, looked at Kevin, and said . . .
KERR : Give me the rest of the day. Let me call some people, just to wrap my head around it.
To his credit, Kevin was really generous about my hesitation. He didn’t seem annoyed at all and told me he totally understood that I wanted to take some time to think about it. Then we walked back to set together, and I pretty quickly got on the phone with a handful of trusted people—my dad, my sister Alison, my manager, my agent… and one Horseman.
MATT FRANKS : You didn’t know what to do. You were concerned. That had never been done on television, and you didn’t want to be potentially typecast. You definitely seemed scared.
My sister talked me off the ledge, as she tends to do. Nobody cheerleads quite like Alison.
ALISON SMITH : Kerr, you’re gonna crush this and really bring your character to life. You just have a way of bringing authenticity and heart to your roles, and I know a lot of people will appreciate that. I am proud of you!
Every one of those inner-circle people listened to me as I paced back and forth that day. And every one ultimately landed on the very same advice: “Do it.” By the end of the day, I had my answer. I tracked Kevin down, back at video village, where this had all started, and said …
Years later, I learned that, like Kevin, the other producers, including Greg and Julie, had been really nervous about approaching me with this buttonhook in Jack’s story arc.
JULIE : I was sweating bullets, feeling like “Oh, we just sprang this on somebody!”
GREG : I was in Kevin’s trailer when he came back in, and he was like, “You know, he was kind of great about it. He was really cool about it.”
KEVIN : You were really cool about it. It could have gone a whole different way!
“Cool” was the last thing I was. Even after making the decision— I acted like I had a choice, but let’s be real, I didn’t—I sought reassurance from the father figure on the show. Enter Dawson’s old man himself.
JOHN WESLEY SHIPP : When they first mentioned to you that they were thinking about making Jack gay, you asked me to go to lunch with you.
KERR : I didn’t know who else to go to other than Berlanti, and I was intimidated by the writer thing.
JOHN : Oh my God, it was so moving to me! I’m so… is “proud” the right word? Talk about Dawson’s memories that stick out—that lunch is in the top three or four. I was trying to speak so carefully: “Kerr, if you’re not gay, you don’t have anything to worry about. If you are, it might cause typecasting problems, but if you aren’t, they’ll just say, ‘What an actor!’”
That wasn’t the only insight John shared with me that day, nor the most persuasive.
JOHN : I said two things: “One, it’s a story Kevin wants to tell, so if you agree to do it, you’ll get the best of Kevin’s writing in your scenes.” And two, “Don’t feel like you have to go on talk shows and righteously assert your heterosexuality. That will offend Kevin. If you’re straight, you’re just straight.” And that’s the way you did the role. You just did the role.
That was my one request when it came to playing Jack. I wasn’t going to lean into any ridiculous stereotypes. I wanted this guy to be real and let the circumstances establish Jack as gay. They tried to change my hair, which I pushed back on; they tried to make Jack a little cooler, I guess, but it wasn’t outrageous. It wasn’t too much.
KEVIN : When you come out, you don’t magically change your DNA and everything about you. I wanted him to be true to who he was. I wanted Jack to come out of the closet as Jack.
Two decades later, my fellow castmates echoed that sentiment.
JAMES VAN DER BEEK : I thought this is really good to put out there, good to do, good to give kids an example because you played him as a strong male. The stereotype at the time was, unfortunately and unfairly, not that.
MARY BETH PEIL : Because I’m basically a theater person, a lot of the comments I’ve gotten come after a show, at the stage door. People who want to tell me how much Dawson’s Creek affected them, how important it was. And I would say the majority of them were about our relationship, Kerr, the relationship between Grams and Jack. That really, really affected them.
JOHN : Meanwhile… we had busloads of Baptists protesting outside the studio gates, “No more gay promo! No more gay promo!”
God. I remember those ugly chants. I remember hearing them while sitting at the table where we’d have lunch. The cafeteria was right near the front of the stage, separated from the studio gates by a cement wall. I never got threats, and I was mostly operating with blinders on back then … but I wasn’t entirely without my guard up. Even with all the support I got from the cast and crew, hearing those people screaming about Jack and gay people and abomination, it was hard not to feel isolated. Especially since the cement wall was decorated with a hand – painted portrait of the “core four.” Through my entire run on Dawson’s Creek , I never felt more like the fifth wheel.
Source: Entertainment
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