Forget about Joey and Pacey, Joey and Dawson. Because Williams and Phillips are the real love story of Dawson’s Creek. The actresses became close when Phillips joined the WB series in 2001.
“Someone said, ‘When two people meet, there’s chemistry,'” Williams recalled in a 2018 interview with People magazine. “I was really excited to have this girl land in Wilmington. We became inseparable and I fell in love with her.”
And the time we worked together on this series was formative.
“My memories of being with her at the time have nothing to do with the show or work, but it was during our vacation,” Phillips told Entertainment Weekly. “We would talk all night on the porch. This was back in the days when we could still eat bread. Lots of bread. That’s what I remember: endless conversations around multiple bread baskets.”
The two have remained one of Hollywood’s closest friends since Dawson’s Creek ended in 2003, and it was Phillips who rushed to Williams’ Brooklyn tenement in 2008 after Williams’ ex-partner Heath Ledger was found dead of an overdose in his apartment.
“I said to her recently, ‘You’ve always been there for me, and you’ve really saved me from being alone,'” Williams told People magazine in 2018. “We’re very close and we can talk to each other about anything. I don’t know what I would have become or who I would have been without Busy.”
Phillips, the godmother of Matrida Ledger, has been a go-to for Williams at the show’s awards ceremonies for years, with each experience reminding the pair of how far they’ve come.
“For her and for me, we want each other to be there as we go through this process. It’s really great to have someone who can be a real-life touchstone when she’s nominated, or at other red carpets and events that we’ve done together,” Phillips explained to Elle. “Maybe I’m giving away a secret, but right before we get on the red carpet, we always look at each other and try to say, ‘Don’t forget how lucky we are. This is our life right now.'”
