Joshua Jackson compares ‘Dawson’s Creek’ audition to the Hunger Games

Joshua Jackson remembers his audition for Dawson’s Creek was more dramatic as the gang’s life on the teen show — and even as brutal as the main event depicted in The Hunger Games movies.

“I think I had like nine auditions for — I think first for Pacey, then for Dawson, then back to Pacey,” Jackson said on a recent episode of Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s Dinner’s on Me podcast. “And then when I made it to the final, final, final thing, they take you to the Warner Bros. ranch.”

Jackson, who went on to play Pacey for all six seasons of the WB series, from 1998 to 2003, recalled that the competition was stiff, especially in that final round. (Ferguson even noted that, early on, he had auditioned for the main role of Dawson Leery, but hadn’t received a call back. The part eventually went to James Van Der Beek.)

“In that room are 35 potential kids who are now, like, put into this Hunger Games moment,” Jackson, who now stars in ABC’s freshman medical drama Doctor Odyssey, said. “And you spend literally the entire day getting called in groups, right, like, ‘Okay, 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.”

The blockbuster movie franchise of The Hunger Games, based on the dystopian novels written by Suzanne Collins, depicts a world in which young people are annually selected to fight each other to the death.

In his case, Jackson, along with Van Der Beek, Katie Holmes, and Michelle Williams, were the last four standing. As Jackson recalled it, the good news came so much later than when they arrived that the sun had gone down.

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“The final cut down, I used the washroom, and I hear the gong go off. 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 and Michelle, as we’re like, ‘Oh, this is where they eat us, I guess. This is where they put us in the pot,'” Jackson said. “And they’re like, ‘Congratulations, you just got the job!’ I don’t even think I knew which role it was that I finally auditioned for.”

Over the years, the cast has remained close, with the others rallying around Van Der Beek following the colorectal cancer diagnosis that he shared last year.