James Van Der Beek recalls moment he knew 'Dawson's Creek' would change everything

James Van Der Beek reminisised over time on Dawson's Creek.

On Saturday, April 5, the 48-year-old actor had a reunion with his Dawson's Creek co-star Kerr Smith for a panel at Steel City Con in Pittsburgh.

The pair reflected on their time on the set of the beloved '90s show.

During the discussion, Van Der Beek talked about the pivotal moment that made him realize that the show would be life-changing.

"I made a movie when I was 17, and everybody said, 'Are you ready for this to change your life?' And I was like, 'Oh, yeah!' I remember going to that movie with my college friends, and there was only one other person in the theater," he began. "I was like, 'I don't think this is going to change my life.' And it didn't at all."

Van Der Beek went on to say, "So when I was in Dawson's Creek, we were in North Carolina — we were far, far, far from Hollywood, we were on the WB Network, which, at the time, was a network that I didn't even get on my closed-circuit cable in my dorm room — so some people were saying, 'Are you ready for this to change your life?' [I was] like, 'I've been down this road before. This is not going to change anything.' And they said, 'Oh no, they're buying billboards,' and I said, 'Whatever.'"

"And then they flew me to L.A., and I saw a billboard with my face, like, blown up a thousand times bigger than my head already is, and I saw my name on the billboard," he noted, adding laughingly, "It was just hilarious to me because I've had to type my name my whole life, like, shift, capital J, space, shift, capital V, space, shift, so the fact that somebody else had to press that shift button four times was the most hilarious thing."