Heavy/GETTY James Van Der Beek
James Van Der Beek recently dished on fatherhood and spending “uninterrupted time” with his six children in a May 8, 2023, interview with “Good Morning America.”
The “Debbie Macomber’s Mrs. Miracle” leading man shared how becoming a father was, in fact, the “craziest thing he’s ever done.” His latest collaboration with Quaker Chewy puts forth the initiative of spending “an hour of uninterrupted time” with family.
“For me, playing with the kids is so important. It’s good for them physically; it’s good for them mentally, emotionally. It’s good for our relationship,” he said to the outlet, noting that when his family lived in Los Angeles, the “trees were our babysitters.” The children range in age from 18 months to 12 years old, and the family moved to Texas in 2020, Van Der Beek’s wife, Kimberly, posted on Instagram.
“Feels like the antidote to getting on a screen,” Van Der Beek said in a story People published May 7, 2023.
The Quaker Chewy commitment partners with Kaboom!, a national nonprofit committed to ending playspace inequity, according to the Chewy Give Play website. With the two foundations joining forces, The Chewy Play Fund is donating $200,000 to the cause.
James Van Der Beek’s Kids Became Fans of One of His Movies
GETTYJames Van Der Beek
In an August 20, 2020, story in US Weekly, Van Der Beek shared which movies and television shows his children loved to watch the most. To his “surprise,” the show “Dawson’s Creek,” for which Van Der Beek is most famous, didn’t make the list.
“They became complete fans over this Hallmark movie, “Mrs. Miracle,” that I did [and] I was kind of embarrassed to tell them that I did “Dawson’s Creek,” he said to US Weekly.
Van Der Beek shared how his kids are “all about Christmas movies,” even watching the 2009 Hallmark favorite during the summer months. His children were curious about filming, asking questions about the set and “what it was like shooting with the kids.” In the interview, he elaborated on how “truthful” kids can be. He said he and his wife allowed the kids to watch his R-rated 1999 film “Varsity Blues.” His son wasn’t a fan of the cursing in the movie and had a few criticisms about his “accent.”
“Before I had kids, the entire spectrum of human behavior and emotions were my palette. And now that I watch my kids consume content, I do think more about, ‘What does this project say?’ It doesn’t mean you have to be serious all the time, or that everything has to be a message piece,” Van Der Beek said to People in a March 7, 2023, story.
James Van Der Beek to ‘Sing & Dance’ in New Role
The Van Der Beeks had a busy year in 2020. According to their social media accounts, they uprooted their family from Los Angeles to Texas. The move was a conscious effort to “ground themselves a little bit more into nature,” said Kimberly to “Good Morning America” on October 14, 2020.
While moving away from Hollywood might impact some actors’ careers, Van Der Beek was still offered roles but “passed on a lot” until the “right” part came along, according to a March 2023 Instagram post.
“I finally said, “yes.” He wrote in the Instagram post. “2020 was set to be a VERY busy year for me. Then… yada yada… we moved to Texas, and a lot of the things I THOUGHT I’d wanted to do no longer seemed exciting. So I passed on a lot. Then this one came up. And if the chance to sing and dance in a comedy with this cast wasn’t enough to get me back on a movie set… it occurred to me, I might as well retire.”
Van Der Beek will join Rebel Wilson (“Picture Perfect”) and “The Other Woman’s” Leslie Mann (“The Other Woman”) in an eOne comedy, “Rock the Boat,” according to the The Hollywood Reporter on March 7, 2023.
“Rock the Boat” is about “four longtime girlfriends try to capture their youth on a cruise ship vacation hosted by their favorite ’90s boy band,” according to IMDb. Van Der Beek will play one of the bandmates.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, this will be the first film he’s agreed to star in since the pandemic.