James Van Der Beek has recalled the time TSA found a Dawson’s Creek-inspired adult film in his bag.
“It’s a 100% true story,” he told USA Today in a new interview.
According to the 47-year-old, who recently revealed he’d been diagnosed with Stage 3 colorectal cancer back in August 2023, the adult film was gifted to him after he finished filming a movie in 2002.
“I received the Dawson’s Crack porno as a wrap gift for The Rules of Attraction,” he explained. “It was on VHS. That’s how long ago this was.”
The actor was heading back to North Carolina to continue filming Dawson’s Creek, where he starred as “Dawson Leery” for all six seasons of The WB drama series.
At the time, Van Der Beek thought it’d be hilarious to show his castmates the NSFW video. “I wanted to show everybody that we’d made it,” he told the outlet. “So, I put it in my suitcase and went through security.
“It was right after 9/11, and security opened up every suitcase, including mine. And it was right on top. Not only was it, you know, a porno, but a porno based on a show I was in,” Van Der Beek continued.
“The TSA guard looked at me, got embarrassed, and just closed the suitcase. And I was on my merry way.”
Nowadays, Van Der Beek may not be carrying full-frontal videos through the airport, but he is willing to star in a striptease if it’s for cancer awareness. In fact, the actor stars in Fox’s new The Real Full Monty special today (December 9) based on the original 1997 film.
In the two-hour-long holiday show led by Anthony Anderson, Van Der Beek is joined by a cast of other male celebrities including Kansas City Chiefs player Chris Jones, Teen Wolf’s Tyler Posey, and Bruno Tonioli from Dancing with the Stars.
The celebrities will practice and perform a striptease dance to raise awareness for testicular, prostate, and colorectal cancer and encourage other men to go to regular check-ups with their doctors.
Last week (December 3), Van Der Beek joined Robin Roberts on Good Morning America to give a health update amid his cancer battle.
“Physically, I’m great. I’m feeling really good emotionally. You know, it’s a lot,” he said before explaining he was “shocked” when he first found out about his cancer after undergoing irregular bowel movements for a prolonged period.
“I was doing what I thought I needed to do by getting a colonoscopy, which obviously, I did need to do,” he noted.
“I was in amazing cardiovascular shape. I was eating what I thought was healthy, and I had a whole agenda for what I thought my year would be and what I thought my priorities would be in the next couple of weeks and months,” Van Der Beek said of himself before he’d received the news.
“And the reality that all of that was going to change and take a different trajectory — it felt like a nightmare, honestly, at first, that I couldn’t quite wake up from. And yeah, it’s a lot.”
Van Der Beek first went public with his cancer diagnosis in November during an interview with People. The star shares six children — Olivia, 14, Joshua, 12, Annabel, 10, Emilia, 8, Gwen, 6, and Jeremiah, 3 — with his wife of 14 years, Kimberly.
