Your Y2K heartthrobs are back, and nobody’s objecting

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The dulcet tones of the “Dawson’s Creek” theme song are enough to get any millennial’s pulse racing, and when Joshua Jackson heard the chorus start playing during the Emmy Awards in September, he burst out laughing. He was walking onstage with Matt Bomer to present an award when Paula Cole’s “I Don’t Want to Wait” started blasting through the speakers, and Jackson – one of the stars of the WB teen drama that ran from 1998 until 2003 – grinned broadly and shook his head as he arrived at the microphone.

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“Ah, yes,” he said to the audience. “This song.”

Clips of his charming reaction racked up millions of views on social media, with many comments noting that Jackson, 46, was “aging like fine wine.” Around the same time, Adam Brody sat for interviews where he was asked repeatedly about starring on “The O.C.,” the 2003-2007 Fox teen soap. Brody, 44, stammered adorably when the “Today” show hosts asked about a New York Times profile that said he had carved out a niche as a “Jewish heartthrob” since his “O.C.” days. Later, he good-naturedly responded to Jimmy Kimmel, who said the show’s fans were “thirsting” for Brody to return to TV: “Perhaps! Hopefully.”

The actors were making the rounds to promote projects that, coincidentally, debuted on Sept. 26: Brody as a hot rabbi who falls in love with Kristen Bell in the Netflix romantic-comedy series “Nobody Wants This,” and Jackson as the alluring cruise ship doctor in the ABC medical drama “Doctor Odyssey.” Brody and Jackson have been successful working actors for years, but now we’ve arrived at a new point in a future that millennials maybe weren’t quite ready for, populated by middle-aged versions of old TV crushes.

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“Nobody Wants This” became a viral sensation and a boost to the rom-com genre, while “Doctor Odyssey” turned into a streaming hit laden with “Lost”-level conspiracy theories. Throw in Josh Hartnett, 46 (the star of movies such as 2002 sex comedy “40 Days and 40 Nights”), making a pivot as a serial killer in M. Night Shyamalan’s thriller “Trap,” and it was suddenly a perfect storm of nostalgia and memes that turbocharged another chapter in a current obsession with reliving the early aughts.

Online, the reaction was focused on Brody and Jackson, mostly with wistfully excited posts: “Seeing Adam Brody and Joshua Jackson back on screen brings back so many memories of our favorite teen dramas. They really defined that era for us.” There were squabbles between age groups: “These two are GenX. You’re welcome to borrow them, but they must be returned to our shelf.” And perhaps most importantly, dreamy reminiscing: “One day, you’re a kid crushing on Joshua Jackson and Adam Brody’s fictional characters and the next thing you know, you’re an adult crushing on Joshua Jackson and Adam Brody’s fictional characters!”

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The word “renaissance” has been tossed around, like it always is, this time maybe as a Brodyssance. And it doesn’t hurt that they seem like nice guys in real life: Brody is married and has two children with “Gossip Girl” star Leighton Meester, making it the marriage of millennial dreams, while Jackson shares adorable anecdotes about the young daughter he co-parents with ex-wife Jodie Turner-Smith.

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Sharon Klein, the head of casting for Disney Entertainment Television (the company’s 20th Television produces “Nobody Wants This” and “Doctor Odyssey”), said the resurgence of these late 1990s and early 2000s stars sounds like a brilliant idea in hindsight, though it was not intentional. It’s a situation that just worked out quite well for everyone involved. Viewers are thrilled to see the evolution of Brody and Jackson into “true leading men,” Klein said, then added the obvious addendum: “sexy” leading men. (People magazine agreed, featuring them both in the Sexiest Man Alive issue this month.)

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“Both of these guys, … not only are they exceptional actors, but they are incredible number ones now on a call sheet. They bring a sense of community to the set and confidence to their performances, which has come from working for 20, 25 years,” Klein said. “They are themselves, and I think people are connecting to that as much as anything.”

These “icon teen fantasy guys” essentially grew up alongside their millennial fans, Klein said, and now they are all adults who share the same sense of sentimentality. Some actors do not like to be reminded of their first shows and would not find it funny if a producer played their old show’s theme song during a fancy awards show.

“That’s what distinguishes these two guys: … They both understand how to continue their audience, and they appreciate their audience,” Klein said. “I would say 90 percent of people who are still working who are successful actors do have that understanding – but not everybody. And these two in particular do.”

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“Dawson’s Creek” shaped ideas of high school romance and friendship for millions of students who ignored their homework Wednesday nights to watch the love triangles of small-town teens Dawson (James Van Der Beek), Joey (Katie Holmes) and Jen (Michelle Williams), along with Jackson, who played Pacey Witter. “The O.C.,” set in wealthy Southern California, had enormous influence on music, fashion and pop culture as it chronicled the misadventures of high-schoolers Ryan (Ben McKenzie), Summer (Rachel Bilson), Marissa (Mischa Barton) and Brody’s Seth Cohen.

Pacey and Seth may have seemed different – Pacey an underachiever, Seth a book smart comics obsessive – but both had a witty, sometimes dark sense of humor that could mask a sweeter, more vulnerable side that made them more accessible to younger viewers.

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“Those characters were so important to people growing up,” said Nikki Griffin, who had a recurring role on “The O.C.” as a troubled party girl and once worked as an extra on “Dawson’s Creek.”

Griffin, now a talent manager, joined “The O.C.” when the series was already a hit in its second season and on its way to becoming a phenomenon. She theorized that watching shows about high school at a formative time in your own life makes the characters even more significant. (She went through something similar with “90210.”) Plus, Brody and Jackson played the respective “sidekicks” who cracked jokes alongside their stereotypically handsome and brooding friends.

“I think what’s so great about these characters in particular is they were written as ‘the best friend’ and they were funny and sardonic and sarcastic – and super cute,” Griffin said. “Obviously there’s people that had crushes on them, but now people realize those are the guys you want: the nice guys, the funny guys, the smart guys.”

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Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, an author and journalist whose latest book, “So Fetch,” is about the making of 2004’s “Mean Girls,” noticed a similar dynamic with Jonathan Bennett, 43, who had his breakout role in the classic film as dreamy senior athlete Aaron Samuels.

His character had to have the sort of appeal to drive the movie’s plot as Lindsay Lohan and Rachel McAdams battled for his attention, Armstrong said, and he did so by being kind, sensitive and smart enough that he could pretend to be a math tutor, instead of just a popular, dumb jock. Bennett has had a steady career as a TV personality and Hallmark star – he came out as gay in 2017 and starred in the network’s first holiday movie led by a same-sex couple – and is now hosting new Hallmark Plus reality competition “Finding Mr. Christmas.”

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“There’s not an alpha-male thing happening,” Armstrong said, which goes for many of the early-2000s actors who are back in the headlines. “There’s a new model of masculinity at play here. … These guys have more dimensions, a softness and an accessibility to them.”

Because viewers can stream them any time they like, “The O.C.” and “Dawson’s Creek” have remained in the public consciousness. Fans still fondly remember Jackson’s and Brody’s characters even as they move on to new roles. Jackson was a standout on Fox’s spooky sci-fi series “Fringe” from 2008 to 2013 and Showtime’s twisty relationship drama “The Affair,” which ran from 2014 to 2019. Brody has appeared as a faux-nice guy in the 2020 film “Promising Young Woman” and as an eternal bachelor in the 2022 miniseries “Fleishman Is in Trouble.” In such roles, both men were allowed the opportunity to embark on more mature content, distancing themselves from the teenagers they once played.

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“Something about seeing Pacey – part of you still clocks that, even seeing him do different things,” Armstrong said. “When [actors] can sort of both transcend a previous role and keep a little feeling of it with them, there’s something really powerful about that.”

The level of nostalgia toward this programming, of course, would not be remotely the same without social media: The popularization of the GIF was instrumental in keeping “Mean Girls” at the forefront of our minds, Armstrong said. The obsession with going back to our youth has become an entire industry.

Erin Miller is a digital creator and nostalgia historian on TikTok with 2.7 million followers to her account the promise of Josh Hartnett. (In a WB-sponsored post, Miller did just that.)

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Miller, an “O.C.” obsessive in high school, said she watched “Nobody Wants This” because Brody is in it and noted that there’s something intriguing about seeing stars such as him, Jackson and Hartnett play fathers or men who are dating in their 30s and 40s.

“These were our teen idols back in the day. We had posters of them on our walls and ripped them out of magazines,” Miller said. “They’re bringing all of this experience and depth they gained over the years and bringing it to new projects.”

For creators, one of the most unexpected – but joyous – parts of such public reminiscing is bonding with others who feel just as passionately. Mary Gagliardi and Kelsey Labrot, both born in 1991, launched the “When They Popped” podcast about Y2K pop culture after they went to a Backstreet Boys concert a couple of years ago; the boy band continues to play to packed crowds years after the release of their platinum-selling albums.

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“We felt like we were sort of always searching for that serotonin hit that came from attending that concert,” Labrot said. Gagliardi agreed that the best part of the podcast has been meeting people who want to build a similar community: “This is our passion project, but just because of all the relationships and friendships we’ve made along the way, it’s really been quite special.”

As they pointed out, TV characters can be very personal, because they help young viewers figure out their own identities: Were you a Seth girl or a Ryan girl? Did you like Dawson or Pacey? And it’s especially satisfying when the actors themselves grasp why people still gravitate to their early work.

“I think, hopefully, we’re now in a place where no one would be embarrassed about being in a dramatic teen soap opera, and really embrace the important role that it had in people’s lives,” Labrot said. If anything, such work should be celebrated: “It was meaningful to people then, and it can still be meaningful to them now.”

– Emily Yahr, The Washington Post

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