Dawson’s Creek star Kerr Smith recalls protest over US TV’s first gay kiss: ‘They’d probably beat the c**p out of me’

Actor Kerr Smith has recalled being targeted by protestors after his character on Dawson’s Creek made history with the first kiss between two men on American network television.

The actor, now 53, played high school student Jack McPhee in the hit teen drama between season two in 1998 and the show’s final season, season six, in 2003. 

Jack was seen to be struggling with his sexuality and during the season three finale, he kissed prep school student Ethan Brody (Adam Kaufman).

While the scene marked a landmark moment for LGBTQ+ representation, becoming the first gay kiss on primetime TV, it was met with a fair amount of backlash. Speaking on the Pod Meets World podcast earlier this week, Smith said he almost came face-to-face with protestors who were “angry as hell”.

“We had protests outside the stage, yelling and screaming… There was a brick wall that separated me, eating my lunch, from a crowd of people that were angry as hell,” he said.

“If I had walked out there, they’d probably beat the c**p out of me. Because it was in the South, too, which didn’t help.”

Smith, who went on to star in other teen dramas including Charmed and Riverdale, remembered being told by the show’s creator Kevin Williamson that they planned on making Jack gay.

Williamson took him out for coffee, when he was just a few months into the job, and informed of Jack’s future storyline.

At the time, given LGBTQ+ representation was practically non-existent, Smith said he was “very, very scared” by the prospect.

“So what happened was I said, ‘Look, can you give me the day or a couple of days, because I need to make some phone calls and basically call everyone that I respect,” Smith explained, adding that he needed to “make the right decision here because at that time in 1998, this is a tough one”.

Needless to say, Smith continued on with the role, and Jack and Ethan’s kiss cemented itself in LGBTQ+ history.

“Now looking back in hindsight, I just wanna say this: I’m super, super proud of what we pulled off because as you know, the face of television has changed, and I think people’s acceptance of other people, sexuality, or whatever it might be is much more broad and much more open these days,” he said.

Back in 2019, Smith addressed the kiss, saying that the pressure was “intense” but he was glad to be “part of history”.

Greg Berlanti, who was an executive producer on Dawson’s Creek, also previously said that there was “resistance” when the plot was first put forward, but said he was prepared to exit the show if it hadn’t unfolded with a kiss.

“When we did the Jack kiss on Dawson’s Creek, everyone was tentative. But I took over the show, and that was an important thing to me. If we were going to bring the character out, it seemed silly to me that he couldn’t kiss,” Berlanti told The Hollywood Reporter.

Williamson once said that Jack’s journey was introduced to reflect his own coming out experience.

“I had just, in my 20s, gone through the coming out process and had told my parents I was gay. I had taken that whole journey, and I wanted a character on the show to represent that journey and to represent that side of me,” he said.

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