Joshua Jackson may have endeared himself to audiences in the late ’90s and early aughts as teen heartthrob Pacey Witter on the WB drama “Dawson’s Creek.” But in the last decade, the Vancouver-born actor has become known for playing a series of dark, brooding men in “The Affair,” “Little Fires Everywhere,” “Dr. Death” and “Fatal Attraction.”
So when prolific producer Ryan Murphy approached him about finally working together on a new series, Jackson — who has always been drawn to Murphy’s ability to write “fast-paced, front-footed dialogue” — had two stipulations: He wanted to play an “uncomplicated” good guy for a change and the production would have to shoot in Los Angeles, where his four-year-old daughter, Juno, is beginning school.
Murphy quickly pitched him “Doctor Odyssey,” a new medical drama set on a luxury cruise ship, which premieres Thursday on ABC and CTV. In the new series, Jackson plays Dr. Max Bankman, a career-oriented, internal medicine physician who, after surviving a life-threatening battle with COVID-19, decides to uproot his life in Connecticut to work on call on an ocean liner.
While “Doctor Odyssey” fits in seamlessly with the bevy of procedural dramas that now populate network television, “it’s more like a ’60s or ’70s romantic comedy than it is a modern procedural,” Jackson said on a recent video call.
The tone, like the fictional cruise ship’s mission statement, is aspirational, almost fantastical wish fulfilment. “There’s the little family of the medical team and the larger family of the people who work on the boat, and every week we have a new group of people who we are there to service and entertain and, in our case, keep alive or healthy.”
A Career Shaped by 'Dawson's Creek'
“Doctor Odyssey” also marks the start of a new journey for Jackson, whose acting career began in earnest as a precocious child who spent his formative years in California. Following his parents’ divorce, Jackson moved with his Irish immigrant single mother and younger sister back to Vancouver, where he lived from the ages of seven to 19. Growing up in the residential area of Kitsilano, where he recalls feeling safe enough to run around and explore on his own, Jackson was a naturally curious and performative child.
The family story goes that when Jackson was very young, his mother tried to dissuade him from wanting to buy new toys by revealing that the children in advertisements were being paid to play with them. “Instead of me hearing, ‘Corporate America is trying to sucker you into buying some plastic that you don’t need,’ what I heard was, ‘Hold on, you get paid to play with toys? That sounds great to me,’” Jackson recalled with a laugh. His mother, a casting director, allowed him to audition to play the younger version of Peter Berg’s character in the 1991 film “Crooked Hearts,” and Jackson landed the role on his 11th birthday.
Jackson was 19 when he landed the role of a lifetime on “Dawson’s Creek” — and it’s a character that continues to follow him to this day. (Even when he smiles now, one can’t help but see flashes of the boyishly handsome Pacey, who has since aged like a fine wine.) In retrospect, as one of the last actors to rise to fame before the age of social media, Jackson admitted he felt relatively insulated from the glaring spotlight of fame.
“A huge life lesson for me was the value and benefit of seeing something through to the end,” said Jackson. “I got kicked out of high school. I didn’t go to college. I didn’t have a high school graduation, so I didn’t have that milestone event of ‘Congratulations. You just put in these five years of your life and you did that.’ So, for me, ‘Dawson’s Creek’ was that (milestone).”
As someone who did not grow up with a father, Jackson now recognizes that his decision to become an actor stemmed, in part, from his desire to get approval from the adult men in his life and to form a sense of community with them.
“Sets at that time were 95 per cent male and it was an environment where, if I was prepared and curious and did my job, I could go and get the respect of adult men,” he explained. “Obviously, I wasn’t conscious of this at the time, but looking back on it, it was so intoxicating to me, as a child without that male figure in my life, to go into a space where there was a very clear honour system for the reward of respect.”
Beyond 'Dawson's Creek': A Shift in Roles
In the immediate aftermath of “Dawson’s,” Jackson admitted he felt physically and emotionally exhausted, but he credits his starring role in a London play with Patrick Stewart with helping him rediscover his love for the craft. After venturing into indie filmmaking for a few years, Jackson received an offer from “Alias” and “Lost” creator J.J. Abrams to star in the Fox sci-fi series “Fringe,” which Jackson described as a “modern ‘X-Files.’” But by the time he wrapped up his five-season run on “Fringe,” Jackson, on the verge of burnout again, decided that he wasn’t interested in committing to another network show.
“Back in those days, you used to do 22 episodes a year, so what I was looking for was a supporting character that had something interesting, with people that I would enjoy working with but that wasn’t going to have to be such a heavy lift,” Jackson said. “It wasn’t that I was specifically looking for something dark. Actually, if I’m being honest, I was being lazy.”
What followed, in Jackson’s 30s, when he began to have more agency in Hollywood, were a series of, as he puts it, “deeply complicated” men wrestling with their own demons. But following the cancellation of a new Starz romantic drama that he was working on last year, as well as his recent separation from his wife Jodie Turner-Smith, Jackson admitted that he longed for an opportunity to tell a lighter, more romantic story. Murphy’s offer to lead a new show, as it turns out, was exactly what the doctor ordered.
The Importance of Family
But at the end of the day, Jackson is most proud of his role as a father. On the morning of our Zoom interview, Jackson — who is quick to regale anyone who will listen (including this writer) with funny stories about his daughter working through moral dilemmas in fictional stories during car rides — was sitting in the parking lot of a CVS and waiting for the store to open so he could buy cough medicine for her. While they have seldom spoken publicly about their separation, Jackson said he and Turner-Smith remain committed to co-parenting and raising their child.
“What I thought in the beginning was that I was going to be in a solid two-parent relationship and that we would be able to model a healthy man-woman relationship for our child. That didn’t happen, which is unfortunate, but that’s life,” said Jackson, who has made it a point to go back to Vancouver as much as possible to show his daughter his hometown. “What I’ve come to realize, even before I got divorced, was so much more than modelling for her this positive dynamic between the two adults, she was giving me the opportunity to experience the love of a father, which I didn’t have in my life.”
A Lasting Legacy
As he heads into the next chapter of his personal and professional life, Jackson insisted that he remains “amazed” that so many of his past projects — “Dawson’s, “The Mighty Ducks,” “Cruel Intentions” — still have multi-generational appeal.
“The odds of me starting from where I started from and getting to where I am right now are extremely, extremely thin,” Jackson said. “I’m at the Paramount lot, so every day I drive through that famous gate with the water tower and I park, which is kind of sacrilegious, in the ‘Jaws’ water tank. It’s just a ‘pinch me’ moment. Here I am, a kid from Kitsilano, and I’ve spent 35 years of my life being a professional actor and they’re still letting me do it.”
The role of Max Bankman in “Doctor Odyssey” was just what the doctor ordered for Joshua Jackson: “It’s more like a ’60s or ’70s romantic comedy than it is a modern procedural.”
