Everyone loves an on-set couple — and these duos are no exception! Mindy Kaling, B.J. Novak, Hilarie Burton and Sophia Bush are just a few of the stars who went from costars to best friends in real life.
Michelle Williams and Busy Philipps, for instance, met while filming Dawson’s Creek. The Oscar nominee starred as Jen Lindley throughout the series’ run from 1998 to 2003, while the Cougar Town alum joined in season 5 as Audrey Liddell.
Philipps described their connection in Entertainment Weekly’s Dawson’s Creek reunion cover story in March 2018. “It was like, you know, how people say love at first sight? We had that thing,” she explained. “We had that friend connection. It was just an immediate: ‘Of course we’re drinking wine and smoking cigarettes and getting in bar fights.’ [Laughs] We just had an immediate love for each other that’s continued over the years.”
Williams, for her part, wanted to emulate her pal. “When I met her, she was the coolest girl I had ever seen,” she recalled. “She had a nose ring. She wore her hair in braids. She wore overalls. And she had this attitude like, ‘I know who I am and don’t cross my line.’ I just thought, ‘I want to be this person when I grow up.’ She was my first real friend I ever had.”
She added: “My memory of being with her then doesn’t have anything to do with the show or working, but it was on our time off. It was talking on the porch all night long and it was back when bread was still OK to eat [laughs]. It was copious amounts of bread. That’s what I remember: an endless conversation over multiple bread baskets.”
Burton, meanwhile, revealed in May 2020 that her friendship with Bush was not always easy. “I thought the story line between [One Tree Hill characters] Peyton and Brooke was the love story of the show. The love stories with all the boys, those were fun, those were important, but Sophia and I had to fight for our own friendship,” she said on the “Chicks in the Office” podcast. “A lot of people wanted to pit us against each other. You know, it’s like, ‘Oh, Hilarie won’t do this, but Sophia will,’ and ‘She’s the pretty one,’ and ‘She’s the this one.’ There’s so much comparison that, as a young person, it’s hard to navigate.”
Scroll down to explore lasting friendships among castmates.
