Things are going well these days for James Van Der Beek. He has a new girlfriend, a new job on NBC’s Mercy and is the first to admit he’s matured quite a bit since his days on Dawson’s Creek.

“I think I got really burnt out and just did not enjoy [acting] for a little while,” he recently told E! News. “I think time [was the turning point]…just time to kind of recharge and grow up a little bit. Now I’m having great fun.”

James has signed on for at least 8 episodes and depending on how things go, he may become a series regular. Which would be fine by him since he’s having fun playing Dr. Joe Briggs, who has a bit of a dark side.

“He might be a womanizer, he has dark secrets possibly, he might have a gambling addiction,” James said. “He’s somebody who is kind of self-righteous, and he’s not at all precious with anybody else’s feelings. He’s got a goal; he goes for it, and he doesn’t really care who he upsets. He’s really playful in a way that almost borders nasty. He’s somebody who just considers himself the smartest guy in the room and is right 90 percent of the time. So what happens in that extra 10 percent, when he’s not right? What happens then?”

James wouldn’t offer much about what Joe’s secret might be but he did tease, “There’s a reason he’s at Mercy Hospital. I think he came from some place that he considers maybe a little bit more upper-crust than that. So there’s a reason he ended up there, and I don’t think it’s necessarily for a promotion.”

James Van Der Beek’s guest stint started tonight on NBC at 8 pm and will run through April.