Joshua Jackson reacts to viral Dawson’s Creek scene: ‘I thought I’d done something terrible’

Joshua Jackson has shared his shocked reaction to a scene from the hit Nineties show Dawson’s Creek going viral... 25 years after it first aired.

On Tuesday’s episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (25 April), the actor, 44, reflected on the moment in season one where his character, Pacey Witter, is hit by a basketball by his friend Dawson Leery (James Van Der Beek) during a row in the school gym.

“The ball hit the camera after it hit my face, and they loved it so much that... I think we did two or three more takes, is my recollection,” Jackson said.

“Somebody had some issues they were trying to work out with me,” he quipped. “Never supposed to do that.”

The actor admitted that when he first heard his name was trending on social media, he panicked, thinking he “must have done something terrible”.

“I immediately reverted to a five-year-old, like, ‘What did I do?’” he said, adding that he was relieved when he found out all the fuss was just about the Dawson’s Creek scene.

“Twitter has its ups and downs,” he said, “but one of the things I love about Twitter is, man, people get into it. So when I did finally get back to my trailer, I realised I hadn’t screwed up and I wasn’t dead, my career wasn’t over. All good things.

“There’s like a forensic analysis of this 25-year-old TV show.”

He confirmed that the ball he was hit with was, in fact, just a beach ball painted to look like a basketball – but the stunt still didn’t “feel great”.

Jackson can next be seen in the reboot of Fatal Attraction, co-starring Lizzy Caplan, on Paramount+.