Is it OK being a famous meme? Depends on what kind of meme it is. For James Van Der Beek of Dawson’s Creek fame, his ‘ugly crying’ meme refuses to go away. Just ask his children.
Beek, 45, says that his eldest daughter Olivia, 12, made the same expression as the meme while they were chatting online.
James Van Der Beek meme
The actor told People during a recent interview how it happened:
“For some online learning, we got them iPads and they immediately discovered memes. So it started, my eldest sent me a meme of myself.”
He played along. The actor-father sent her a meme of him dancing or something. His daughter responded by sending him that infamous crying meme.
“She immediately hit me with the cry face,” he says while laughing, adding,” I thought, ‘That’s aggressive.'”
His kids know he’s famous
Beek says that his son Joshua, 10, is very good at sniffing out people who recognize his fame.
“My son can sniff out when we walk into a restaurant and somebody recognizes me — the skill that took me like 20 years to learn,” he says. “And he just gets it: ‘Daddy, those ladies at the table right now? They know.’ It’s interesting.”
The actor says this is interesting to navigate with his kids. He tries to be “really honest about all of my experience with it, about what it means and what it doesn’t.” Being famous sure has its challenges.
James Van Der Beek also has four more children – Gwendolyn, 4, Emilia, 6, and Annabel, 8, and son Jeremiah, 12 months. He recently celebrated his youngest son’s birthday with the whole family in Texas. He says Jeremiah has been a magical final piece to their family.
