‘Dawson’s Creek’ Alum Joshua Jackson Recalls Hunger Games-Like Audition for Pacey — and Dawson

Joshua Jackson endured an exhausting and surreal audition process to play Pacey Witter on the 2000s WB series Dawson’s Creek, judging by what he shared with Jesse Tyler Ferguson.

In the April 21 episode of Ferguson’s Dinner on Me podcast, Jackson recalled auditioning for Pacey — and for Dawson Leery, the role that went to James Van Der Beek.

“I think I had, like, nine auditions for, I think, first for Pacey, then for Dawson, then back to Pacey,” Jackson said. “And then when I made it to the final, final, final thing, they take you to the Warner Bros. Ranch. I don’t even know if this place exists anymore. The WB had this, like, Quonset hut, basically on the side. When you walk in, there’s a giant gong and a woman at the desk whose job it is to say ‘WWWB?’ every time she answers the phone. I s*** you not.”

In that room, were three dozen actors who were “put into this Hunger Games moment,” Jackson said, likening the tryouts to the life-or-death competitions from Suzanne Collins’ YA books.

“You spend literally the entire day getting called in groups — [they’re] going, like, ‘OK, you two, you four’ — getting taken back to the room, you audition, and then you come out, and four people are just gone, and then two people are gone,” Jackson.

Finally, at the end of the day, Jackson heard the sound of the gong as he was using the restroom. “I come out of the toilet, and now every executive from The WB has come from every office everywhere and is just standing there staring at me, and James and Katie [Holmes] and Michelle [Williams], as we’re like, ‘Oh, this is where they eat us, I guess. This is what happens now. They put us in the pot.’ And they’re like, ‘Congratulations, you just got the job.’ I don’t even think I knew which role it was that I had finally auditioned for. They were just like, you, you, you, you. That’s how they used to do their castings.”

Those four actors became household names on the teen drama, which ran for six seasons between 1998 and 2003. Jackson followed that job with starring roles in Fringe, The Affair, Little Fires Everywhere, and Dr. Death. Now he’s starring as Dr. Max Bankman on Doctor Odyssey.

And on the podcast, Jackson expressed his hope that the gong ritual got phased out. “If you hit the gong, everybody has to scurry out of the office to get whatever the news is,” he said. “I would like to think at some point, somebody there was like, ‘This is not great. This is weird. Also, let’s not make this poor woman say WWWB every time she answers the phone.’”