There’s a Little Dawson’s Creek in Every Michelle Williams Role

Michelle Williams in Dawson’s Creek. Photo: Columbia Tristar Television via Getty Images

Michelle Williams’s Oscar-nominated performances stand on the dock that Dawson’s Creek built. The Fabelmans actor, who is up for a number of honors this awards season, has said she learned crucial acting techniques on the set of the teen soap and does not diminish the significant role the show played in her development as a performer. “Maybe there’s a connection between firstness and lastness, so I’m constantly reconnecting with my time on Dawson’s Creek because every project that I end somehow recalls that to me,” Williams told the New York Times when asked about her shout-out to the show in her Gotham Awards speech. “But it was an incredible kind of training because you’re also learning these really fundamental things, like how to have a conversation with somebody where you’re looking them in the eye but some part of you is also scanning downward to hit your mark. It’s that kind of technical stuff that seems sort of silly and small that still comes in handy for me.”

The show didn’t just provide Williams with some technical training; it gave her the opportunity to dive into Capeside High’s deliciously overwrought dialogue. “So much dialogue, oh my God,” she recalled. “Twelve pages a day, really verbose.” So we have the soapy script and the breakneck speed of network-television production to thank for the actor’s crying face in Brokeback Mountain, Blue Valentine, and Manchester by the Sea. Capeside, you will always be famous.