Joshua Jackson and Katie Holmes walked the red carpet together in New York City on Tuesday night for the first time since their Dawson’s Creek costar James Van Der Beek died in February.
The pictures from Lincoln Center’s David Koch Theatre are warm and genuine and carry weight that a simple celebrity sighting article does not fully capture.
They were there for the New York Gala screening of Brunello: The Gracious Visionary, a documentary about the life and rise of Italian luxury fashion designer Brunello Cucinelli.
Holmes wore a shimmering silver sequined maxi skirt paired with a white collared shirt that draped off one shoulder, her short lob cut perfectly styled. Jackson wore grey trousers, a burgundy jacket, a crisp white shirt, and a grey bow tie, his now grey hair giving him the kind of distinguished look that makes people describe men as having “aged gracefully.”
Page Six reported they laughed together consistently on the carpet. In one photo he looked over at her with an expression of genuine warmth as she laughed. In another they linked arms for the cameras.
This is what a friendship of almost 25 years looks like on a Tuesday night in New York.
What Is Jackson And Holmes’ Relationship Like?
Holmes and Jackson first met as teenagers when they were cast in Dawson’s Creek, the WB drama that premiered in 1998 and ran until 2003.
She played Joey Potter, the girl next door with literary ambitions, perpetually torn between two men.
He played Pacey Witter, the underestimated charmer, the one who showed up with the sailboat, the one who memorized things she loved about herself before she did.
The show’s finale gave Joey to Pacey. The internet has never fully recovered.
In real life, the casting came with its own version of that story. During the first season of filming, Holmes and Jackson briefly dated.
She told Rolling Stone in 1998, “I’m just going to say that I met somebody last year,” declining to name him but not denying it was Jackson.
The relationship was brief. The friendship was not. They have stayed close through the nearly two and a half decades since the show ended, through marriages, divorces, careers in different directions, and the ordinary accumulations of adult life that either strengthen or dissolve the bonds you form when you are young.
Jackson described the friendship on the Today show in March, talking about reuniting with her for their new project:
“That time in my life would be for most people like their college years, right? And there are these people in your life, she’s a lifelong friend now, and for us to be able to go back and do this again, and, honestly, for her to be able to create that space for us was kind of magical.”
Happy Hours: The Film Series That Brought The Together Again
The reason Jackson was on Today in March, and part of the reason Tuesday’s red carpet appearance means what it does, is Happy Hours, a film trilogy written and directed by Holmes in which she and Jackson once again play romantic leads.
Filming began in New York City in July 2025. When Holmes announced it on Instagram on July 10 of that year, she wrote:
“I am so very grateful to be working again with so many of my wonderful friends on this film HAPPY HOURS. And working with Josh after so many years is a testament to friendship. HAPPY HOURS is a love story that includes so many people I adore.”
The structure of the project is ambitious. It is designed as three films tracing the three phases of a couple’s love story, people who dated as teenagers, whose relationship evolved and changed across the decades of their lives.
Jackson described it on Today as “the three phases of a love story.” The first film covers the falling in love phase, and it has been shot.
Holmes was editing it at the time of that interview, with Jackson expressing hope that the first film would create the opportunity to go back and make the other two.
The plot follows life with unusual precision. Holmes and Jackson play characters who dated when they were young and reconnect as adults to explore what remains between them.
This mirrors their actual history with an accuracy that neither of them appears to find uncomfortable, in fact Jackson called making the film “magical.”
Holmes casting him as her romantic lead in her own directorial project says something about the depth of trust between them. The film is expected to debut sometime in 2026.
Why This Reunion Carries More Weight
Tuesday’s appearance was the first time Holmes and Jackson were seen publicly together since James Van Der Beek died on February 11, 2026. He was 48.
He had been diagnosed with stage III colorectal cancer in 2023, kept the diagnosis private until November 2024, and died two and a half months after going public with his illness.
His family’s statement read, “Our beloved James David Van Der Beek passed peacefully this morning. He met his final days with courage, faith, and grace.”
He left behind his wife Kimberly and their six children.
Van Der Beek was Dawson Leery, the title character of the show, the one both Joey and the audience were supposed to love most, the one the finale ultimately moved away from in one of the most talked-about endings in teen television history.
He was also, by every account from everyone who knew him, one of the genuinely good ones.
A source told a publication in the weeks after his death:
“Neither of them want to accept this. James was just the greatest guy, it’s a huge loss. And not just for them, they are devastated for his six kids and his wife. He fought so hard to stick around for them.”
Jackson spoke about Van Der Beek on Today in March with the care of someone trying to say something true about a person they loved. “He and I shared this amazing time where that Dawson’s Creek clip comes from at a very young point in our life and it was formational for us,” he said. “He became what we used to just call a good man, a man of the kind of belief, the kind of faith…”
He reached for something more:
“Something my dad told me was, if this didn’t work out the way he wanted it to and the way we wanted it to, for him living, I still have to believe in miracles. Miracles can still happen.”
The last time Holmes and Jackson had gathered with the Dawson’s Creek family before Tuesday was September 2025, when they joined Michelle Williams, Busy Philipps, and others in New York for a live table read of the show’s pilot, a charity event in support of Van Der Beek and the organization F Cancer.
That was before Van Der Beek died. Tuesday night was the first public appearance together after.
What The Appearance Meant To Fans
It means different things to different people. For fans who grew up watching Joey and Pacey, who watched their fictional romance play out over five seasons, who chose a side in a debate that the finale tried to settle, seeing Holmes and Jackson arm in arm on a red carpet triggers something that runs deeper than celebrity news.
These characters were formative for a generation of viewers in the same way the actors themselves say the show was formative for them.
For people who have been following the Dawson’s Creek cast’s grief since February, the images from Tuesday carry something quieter, the sight of two people who loved the same person showing up in the same place and finding a way to smile.
Holmes and Jackson were both 47 on Tuesday night, both single, both still working, both carrying whatever they carry from a show that ended 23 years ago and from a death that happened two months ago.
They linked arms at Lincoln Center for a documentary about an Italian fashion designer and they laughed consistently on the carpet, and the pictures from the event have been circulating online since they were posted because some things land differently than the event they document.
There is an episode of Dawson’s Creek’s fourth season called Promicide, aired May 2, 2001, in which Pacey and Joey have their prom night breakdown, one of the most devastating episodes of the show’s run.
The 25th anniversary of that episode is in a few weeks. Timing is sometimes just timing. Sometimes it isn’t.
