{"id":317870,"date":"2026-03-02T12:46:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T12:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/317870\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T12:46:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T12:46:07","slug":"michelle-williams-breaks-silence-on-james-van-der-beeks-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/317870\/","title":{"rendered":"Michelle Williams breaks silence on James Van Der Beek&#8217;s death"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Michelle Williams has broken her silence on the death of her Dawson&#8217;s Creek co-star James Van Der Beek.<br \/>The Brokeback Mountain actress addressed the passing of her late friend and co-star for the first time on Sunday night, after she accepted an Actor Award for her TV miniseries Dying for Sex. <br \/>Speaking to Entertainment Tonight backstage at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, Williams opened up about Van Der Beek. <br \/>&#8220;I&#8217;m thinking about him and I&#8217;m thinking about his family constantly,&#8221; she told the outlet.<br \/>Williams, who played Jen Lindley opposite Van Der Beek&#8217;s Dawson Leery in the teen drama series, went on to thank those who have contributed to the GoFundMe set up to support the actor&#8217;s widow and children since he passed away on 11 February at the age of 48. <br \/>&#8220;I also just want to say, like, it&#8217;s been such an amazing thing as James&#8217; friend and a friend of the family to see the response in the wake of his passing and I just really want to say thank you to each and every person who contributed to sustaining their life and their children&#8217;s lives,&#8221; she continued. &#8220;It&#8217;s an incredibly meaningful thing to witness.&#8221;<br \/>The fundraiser has surpassed its original goal of $1.5 million (\u00a31.1 million) and has now reached $2.75 million ($2 million). <br \/>Sunday night&#8217;s Actor Awards marked Williams&#8217; first public outing since Van Der Beek&#8217;s death. She won Best Actress in a Limited Series.<br \/>Van Der Beek was diagnosed with stage 3 colorectal cancer in 2023.<br \/>In September last year, Williams reunited with her Dawson&#8217;s Creek cast members Katie Holmes, Joshua Jackson, Mary-Margaret Humes, Kerr Smith, and Busy Philipps, among others, for a live table read of the pilot episode in New York City to raise money for F Cancer. Van Der Beek was slated to attend, but he dropped out due to a stomach virus, so Lin-Manuel Miranda filled in for him.<br \/>Williams helped produce the event with her husband Thomas Kail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michelle Williams has broken her silence on the death of her Dawson&#8217;s Creek co-star James Van Der Beek.The&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":317871,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[458,147034,158477,146,85,46,26796,12983,40972],"class_list":["post-317870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-dawson-leery","tag-dawson39s-creek","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-james-van-der-beek","tag-michelle-williams","tag-van-der-beek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}