The actor’s new book ‘I Don’t Want to Wait: My Life on Dawson’s Creek’ is out now

NEED TO KNOW

• Kerr Smith opens up about how writing his book I Don’t Want to Wait helped him process his time playing Jack McPhee on Dawson’s Creek
• The actor says it was “probably healthy for me to do a project like this”
• I Don’t Want to Wait is out now

For Kerr Smith, writing his first book was not only nostalgic — it was also cathartic.

In the late ‘90s and the early aughts, the Pennsylvania-born actor made history on the Kevin Williamson-helmed teen drama Dawson’s Creek, playing Jack McPhee, whose storyline as a gay member of the Capeside crew became iconic throughout his five-season tenure on the show.

“It was so long ago, but this [book] kind of made it feel like it just happened yesterday,” Smith, now 54, tells PEOPLE of the series, which premiered in 1998.

In his first book, I Don’t Want to Wait: My Life on Dawson’s Creek (out now via Grand Central Publishing), which is part-memoir and part-behind-the-scenes history of Dawson’s Creek, Smith revisits his beloved role and the show’s fan-favorite characters with interviews from creator Williamson, the cast, crew and writing staff and dives into the impact of playing Jack nearly three decades ago.

When Smith first signed on to play Jack on the WB series, he wasn’t aware his character would be gay. In fact, Smith had played Jack in six episodes when Williamson asked him to grab a cup of coffee. That’s when he found out that the show’s creator wanted to take Jack in a different direction.

Initially, Smith, who is straight, hesitated and consulted his inner circle for advice. But it wasn’t long until he decided to go all-in.

During season 3, Smith, as Jack, made history as the first gay male character to share a passionate same-sex kiss on primetime television.

“There’s a lot of buried emotions, thoughts and feelings that I was dealing with back then on the show that resurfaced,” he says, of writing the book. “[It was] probably healthy for me to do a project like this.”

“Playing a character like that was very difficult,” he says, adding that he struggled with “being the fifth wheel” to the main cast after joining the show in season 2.

Writing I Don’t Want to Wait also enabled Smith to have meaningful conversations with his “sweet” late co-star James Van Der Beek over the course of a number of months before he died at 48 in February 2026.

Smith recalled how generous Van Der Beek was with his time while he was filming what would be his final role as mayoral hopeful Dean Wilson for Elle in Vancouver.

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“He clearly was not feeling well that day, and he gave me the time that I needed, because I really needed to talk to James for a book like this. That’s the kind of thing he did for you,” he says.

Smith is grateful to have had what he considers three separate relationships with Van Der Beek over the years, something which he discusses in I Don’t Want to Wait.

“We had the relationship as kids when we were just figuring out how to deal with everything that was happening to us. We both got married right after the show ended, and our ex-wives became very good friends, so we were always hanging out at each other’s homes, playing dominoes and having conversations,” he says.

“And then there was a third relationship that I had with James years later, where we started doing some conventions together” Smith adds. “That was my favorite, actually, because I got to know James as a [48]-year-old man, and he got to know me as a 54-year-old man.”

For the author, it was rewarding to see how their values had really aligned over the years.

“We had both figured out who we were in the universe and what it all meant, at least to the best degree that you can as a human being,” says Smith. “We agreed on a lot of things, and I was really, really enjoying that third friendship. Unfortunately, it was cut short, but I’ll never forget it.”

I Don’t Want to Wait: My Life on Dawson’s Creek is out now, wherever books are sold.

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