James Van Der Beek in ‘Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23’: A Master of Self-Parody
Krysten Ritter starred alongside James Van Der Beek in the 2012 ABC sitcom 'Don't Drust the B in Apartment 23.'
After starring in Dawson's Creek, the actor had a hard time shaking his famous role — so he decided to lean in
After
Dawson’s Creek wrapped in 2003,
James Van Der Beek took a while to find his footing. There was
The Plague, a direct-to-video horror flick produced by Clive Barker about kids mysteriously falling into comas. There was
Final Draft, a similarly questionable horror movie about a writer who loses his mind trying to pen a script about a killer clown. He played a doctor on the medical drama
Mercy and a psychotic killer with multiple personalities on the CBS procedural
Criminal Minds. But where he really seemed to thrive — or at least where audiences noticed him most — was when he poked fun at himself and shedded his perceived self-seriousness, like in Kesha’s video for “Blow,” and in skits for Funny or Die (DILF khakis, anyone?).
Nahnatchka Khan never thought she’d actually be able to land Van Der Beek when she was putting together her first show,
Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23, a raunchy ABC sitcom about Indiana hayseed June (Dreama Walker) who moves to the big city and shacks up with the titular B, Chloe (
Krysten Ritter). Khan knew that she wanted Chloe’s best friend to be a famous actor around their age, playing himself, and when the casting director brought in a sheet of suggested names, Van Der Beek’s stuck out. “I never thought that James would even be close to being available, so I could never have even imagined that he would want to do it,”
she said at the time. But he was blown away by the script, and the Van Der Beek-aissance was underway. “I think once the [
Dawson’s Creek] residual money ran out is really when it became okay to make fun of it,” he told
NBC New York in 2012, when the sitcom premiered. “Thankfully they’ve kept me around Hollywood long enough to kind of have a second coming.”
CONTINUED:
After starring in Dawson's Creek, James Van Der Beek had a hard time shaking his famous role — so he decided to lean in.
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