Forget Joey and Pacey, and Joey and Dawson, because Williams and Phillipps were the true love story of Dawson’s Creek. The actresses became close when Philipps joined the WB series in 2001.
“Someone had said, ‘When you two meet, there is going to be a chemical reaction,'” Williams recalled in a 2018 interview with People. “I had been really excited for this girl to land in Wilmington. We became inseparable and I fell in love with her.”
And their time working together on the series was formative.
“My memory of being with her then doesn’t have anything to do with the show or working, but it was on our time off,” Philipps told Entertainment Weekly. “It was talking on the porch all night long and it was back when bread was still okay to eat. It was copious amounts of bread. That’s what I remember: an endless conversation over multiple bread baskets.”
In the years since Dawson’s Creek ended in 2003, they have remained one of Hollywood’s closest pair of friends, and it was Philipps who rushed to Williams’ Brooklyn row home after her former partner Heath Ledger was found dead in his apartment of an accidental overdose in 2008.
“I said to her recently, ‘You have really saved me from ever being lonely because you are always right there,'” Williams told People in 2018. “We are so close and can tell each other everything. I don’t know what I would be or who I would be without Busy.”
Philipps, who is godmother to Matlida Ledger, was Williams’ go-to date to award shows for years, with each experience reminding the duo how far they have come.
“I think for her, and for me too, to have each other by our sides as we go through this process, and when she’s been nominated, or on other red carpets that we’ve done together, or events, it’s just great to have somebody that can be your touchstone for reality,” Philipps explained to Elle. “Maybe I’m giving away a secret, but we always try right before we get to one of these red carpets to just look at each other and say, ‘Don’t forget how lucky we are. This is our life now.'”
