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Philipps joined the cast of the beloved teen drama in season 5, closing out the series with regulars like Michelle Williams and Joshua Jackson in season 6. Busy

Philipps joined the cast of the beloved teen drama in season 5, closing out the series with regulars like Michelle Williams and Joshua Jackson in season 6.

Busy Philipps weighs in on 'insanely inappropriate' Dawson's Creek storyline: 'So wild'

Philipps joined the cast of the beloved teen drama in season 5, closing out the series with regulars like Michelle Williams and Joshua Jackson in season 6.

By Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman is a news writer for with previous work in MUBI Notebook, Slant, and the LA Review of Books.

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October 13, 2025 5:51 p.m. ET

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The cast of 'Dawson's Creek' season 6. Credit:

Cinematic / Alamy

*Dawson's Creek* is beloved, but perhaps not perfect — and Busy Philipps knows that better than anyone.

Reflecting on the storied teen drama that helped launch the careers of Hollywood stars like Michelle Wiliams, Katie Holmes, and Philipps herself, the actress recently pointed to one early storyline involving her frequent scene partner Joshua Jackson that still shocks her.

"He's going to have a really insanely inappropriate relationship with a teacher, which by the way, is so wild," she said of Jackson's character, Pacey Whitter, in a new interview with PEOPLE. Philipps mused that the torrid tryst between 15-year old Pacey and 36-year-old teacher Tamara Jacobs (played by Leann Hunley) "just goes to show you culturally how much we have changed for the better, right?"

Joshua Jackson and Leann Hunley on 'Dawson's Creek' in 1998.

Courtesy Everett

*Dawson's Creek* ran for six seasons on the WB, from 1998 to 2003. Created by *Scream* scribe Kevin Williamson, the coming-of-age drama starred Holmes, Williams, Jackson, and James Van Der Beek as a group of small-town Massachusetts teens who become lovers and best friends, break up, make up, and ultimately grow up.

Fans still debate which couple was the series' true endgame, though it's Jackson's Pacey and Holmes' Joey Potter who walk into the sunset in the finale. Still, Pacey's tumultuous affair with his teacher made an enormous impact when it played out across the first and second seasons, and it would loom over the character's entire arc across the series.

Pacey first meets Tamara when she visits Screen Play Video, the rental store where he works as a clerk. They flirt, and the following Monday she realizes on her first day teaching at Capeside High School that Pacey is one of her students. He pursues her, and they eventually sleep together after Pacey reveals to Tamara that he's a virgin.**

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Philipps joked that while Williamson "didn't write the part of Audrey," her character on the* *fifth and sixth seasons of *Dawson's* (Williamson left the show he created after season 2), he could take some credit after she voiced Tamara in a recent table read of the *Dawson's Creek *pilot. "After the show, I said, 'Well, Kevin, I guess you did write a part for me on *Dawson's Creek*. You just didn't know that it would take 20 years for me to be the right age to play it.'"

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Jackson himself addressed the controversial storyline in 2021. The actor acknowledged that while it's "real for a younger person to have sexual desires for an older person," he believes that "we still treat teenage female sexuality very differently than we teach or treat male teenage sexuality." He kept that disparity in mind when circling back to the Pacey-Tamara storyline, asking himself, "Do I think that the show should have judged it differently? Maybe, because it's part and parcel of that double standard."****

The cast of 'Dawson's Creek' reunites in 2025.

Cindy Ord/Getty

Hunley commented in 2011 that the Pacey-Tamara story is one that "has been around a long time," adding that she and Jackson "actually built like an unusual trust in each other… We managed to find that and make it work."

While Hunley was not present at the recent *Dawson's* reunion table read, which raised money for the charity F Cancer in honor of Van Der Beek's colorectal cancer diagnosis, Jackson turned out alongside Philipps, Holmes, Williams, and Van Der Beek (the latter of whom appeared via video message).**

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