From “fringe” to cringe.
Joshua Jackson, whose father abandoned him and his family when he was young, gave an awkward response to a reporter who asked him what the “best advice” his father ever gave him.
The “Dawson’s Creek” actor burst out laughing in response to the question and said, “My father abandoned his family.”
“You know?” he continued, growing more serious. “The best advice my father happened to give me while he was away was to continue to be a good father.”
Comments online were divided between shock that Jackson, 47, was asked the question and admiration for his heartfelt answer.
“(A)Are you crazy to ask (J)Osure such a question…” one person wrote about the interviewer, Isaac Hindin Miller. Another chimed in: “Damn Joshua 😢😢 but I love what he said at the end! 🙌.”
The moment was featured in director Hindin Miller’s recap at the premiere of “Brunello: The Elegant Seer” on Tuesday at New York City’s Lincoln Center. Celebrities like Martha Stewart, Shonda Rhimes, and Ryan Seacrest also responded to the same prompt.
Elsewhere at the documentary premiere, Jackson reunited with his Dawson’s Creek co-star Katie Holmes.
The former castmates, who briefly dated in real life in the late ’90s, posed together on the red carpet, laughing and smiling wide at each other as they linked arms.
In a 1998 interview with the Seattle Times, Jackson recalled that his parents’ divorce was a “very traumatic experience” for him.
“I did it alone, just me, my sister and my mom,” he said at the time. “I went from a very wealthy childhood to a few tough years and rebuilding. My mom did that for me. She and I are very close.”
Just last year, during an interview on Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s Dinners on Me podcast, Jackson revealed that he felt “sympathy” for his father after his death, now that he too is an “adult with children.”
“My father, who I was never close to, also passed away. And for the first time, I felt so much sympathy for him, because I felt the pain that he must have had to have brought four children into this world and basically lived without a relationship with any of them…” said the actor.
“If I did something that would take my daughter away from me, I would be at a loss,” he added.
Jackson has a 6-year-old daughter, Juno, with ex-wife Jodi Turner-Smith, whom he married in August 2019.
Turner-Smith filed for divorce from the Cruel Intentions star in October 2023 after four years of marriage.
The former couple had planned to go to a judge in October for custody of Juno, but ultimately agreed to resolve their differences out of court.
