Even though James Van Der Beek starred on the hit TV show “Dawson’s Creek,” the actor, who died on Wednesday at age 48, once revealed that he received no money from the show’s reruns that could have potentially made him wealthy for life.

Van Der Beek said in a 2012 interview that a clause in the contract he signed at age 20 kept him from earning residuals after the teen drama ended and went into syndication, the Daily Mail reported. TV actors have traditionally relied on residuals to provide them with an income after a show ends.

“There was no residual money,” he told the “Today” show. “I was 20. It was a bad contract. I saw almost nothing from that.”

This “bad contract” could help explain why the actor, married with six children, had “run out of funds” by the time he died of complications from a two-year battle with Stage 3 colorectal cancer.

The extent of Van Der Beek’s financial difficulties became known Wednesday soon after his widow, Kimberly Van Der Beek, announced his death on Instagram. Friends of the family almost immediately launched a GoFundMe campaign, which had raised $2.3 million as of midday Friday. The target was $1.5 million, with the description saying that the actor’s health struggles left his wife and their children, ages 4 to 15, “out of funds” and struggling to stay in their Texas home.

“Throughout illness, the family faced not only emotional challenges but also significant financial strain as they did everything possible to support James and provide for his care,” the description reads. “In the wake of this loss, Kimberly and the children are facing an uncertain future. The costs of James’s medical care and the extended fight against cancer have left the family out of funds.”

Friends of the actor have more than come through, raising more than $1.2 million in seven hours after the GoFundMe campaign was launched. The post explained that the funds would cover essential living expenses, bills, and would support the children’s education, saying the family is “working hard to stay in their home and to ensure the children can continue their education and maintain some stability during this incredibly difficult time.”

“The support of friends, family, and the wider community will make a world of difference as they navigate the road ahead,” it also said.

According to the Daily Mail, it’s been reported that Van Der Beek and his “Dawson’s Creek” co-stars Katie Holmes, Joshua Jackson and Michelle Williams started out making $35,000 per episode during the first season in 1998. But as the show’s success grew, each earned as much as $175,000 per episode in the final season.

Their salaries were never officially confirmed, but Jackson once boasted how he, at age 19, “‘would make more money doing four episodes of Dawson’s Creek than most of my friends’ parents made in a year,” the Daily Mail reported.

But once the show ended, the lack of residuals from reruns could have dented cast members’ prospects of long-term income from the show, the Daily Mail said. In contrast, the main cast members of “Friends,” another hit 1990s show, each made more than $1 million per episode during the show’s run and continued to earn more than $20 million a year in syndication income from Warner Bros, Fox Business News reported. That income reportedly grew after the show’s reruns were picked up by Netflix.

Van Der Beek’s post-“Dawson’s Creek” career also didn’t quite take off like his castmates’ did, with Williams becoming an Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning actress who regularly stars in acclaimed independent films or in prestige TV series. Holmes and Jackson have likewise kept busy with film and TV projects.

During “Dawson’s Creek,” Van Der Beek said he worked pretty intensely and enjoyed his most successful film role in the 1999 teen football drama, “Varsity Blues.” But once “Dawson’s Creek” ended in 2003, Van Der Beek said he was burned out and began passing on parts.

“I was very afraid to say yes to anything,” Van Der Beek told Variety. “I was also burned out and wanted to take a break, and I passed on a lot of things because it didn’t feel like something that I really wanted to do, or (was) something that I didn’t want to promote.” But once he began passing on parts, he said that “people stopped offering.”

Still, Van Der Beek continued to work over the years, though usually in guest-starring or recurring roles in TV series. He also competed on “Dancing with the Stars” in 2019 and began working on a podcast with SiriusXM and Stitcher that would have paid him $700,000 for more than 40 episodes, the Daily Mail reported. But the companies pulled out of the deal. In December, Van Der Beek sold off memorabilia from the set of “Dawson’s Creek,” bringing in $47,000.

On his 48th birthday last March, Van Der Beek said it was hard for him to keep working after starting his cancer treatment in 2023. In a video recorded to Instagram, he acknowledged his disappointment that he could no longer be the family “provider,” nor could he always be “the helpful husband” and hands-on father when he was away for treatment. He also said he was sometimes too weak to do any upkeep on the family ranch outside Austin, Texas, where he and Kimberly moved in 2020 to get their children out of Hollywood.

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