Embellished director, producer, and author Kevin Williamson is the genius behind a few of Hollywood’s most beloved TV exhibits and flicks, having notably created the teenager drama sensations Dawson’s Creek and The Vampire Diaries whereas penning the screenplays for horror classics like Scream, I Know What You Did Final Summer time, and The College. With a profession spanning over thirty years, it is protected to say Williamson is aware of precisely what he is doing in the case of crafting fascinating tales with engrossing characters.
Williamson is again with a brand-new small-screen hit with The Waterfront, a Netflix unique collection that focuses on the Buckley household as they battle to maintain their North Carolina fishing empire afloat after struggling private setbacks. The present is already making fairly the streaming splash, and followers can not help however ponder whether the colourful household relies on actual individuals or if it is a whole work of fiction; let’s try the artistic historical past behind The Waterfront.
The Waterfront
- Launch Date
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June 19, 2025
- Community
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Netflix
- Administrators
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Marcos Siega
The Deeply Private Origins of the ‘The Waterfront’
In terms of crafting his many Hollywood hits, Kevin Williamson isn’t one to shrink back from utilizing his personal private experiences for a bit inspiration. In 2025, the illustrious creator returned to his roots for the crime drama The Waterfront. Set within the coastal city of Havenport, North Carolina, the collection facilities on the Buckleys, a distinguished fishing household whose empire begins to crumble after their patriarch Harlan Buckley (Holt McCallany) suffers two coronary heart assaults, forcing his spouse Belle (Maria Bello), daughter Bree (Melissa Benoist), and son Cane (Jake Weary) to attempt to hold the enterprise afloat.
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The Waterfront is closely impressed by Williamson’s real-life household background and his childhood in North Carolina, with the TV titan basing the character of the surly Harlan Buckley on his precise father Wade, who was a hard-working fisherman. Very similar to Harlan, Williamson’s father “bought tempted to do some issues that weren’t so authorized and bought him in some bother”, he revealed to Netflix Tudum in an interview. Nonetheless, Wade by no means ventured into the world of organized crime regardless of his run-ins with the regulation, with Williamson declaring, “My dad was a really, excellent man. He was a fisherman.”
Williamson Pays Tribute to His Roots & Beloved Father
Identical to within the knockout Netflix collection, Wade was a seasoned fisherman, and his mom Fayee labored at a resort, and Williamson grew up residing and respiratory all issues ocean-related. He advised Time.com: “I come from a household of fishermen — not simply my dad, however your complete household. Everybody I knew was a fisherman.” When issues started to dramatically decelerate for Wade within the ’80s attributable to overfished waters and more and more strict environmental rules, the Williamson patriarch struggled to offer for his household as his livelihood started to vanish, backing him right into a nook:
“Somebody got here alongside and stated, ‘In the event you do that one factor, you may make all this cash.’ And it was arduous to say no. He bought caught, he served his time, he bought out, and I graduated.”
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Wade was in the end arrested for conspiracy to site visitors 20,000 kilos of marijuana, serving lower than a yr behind bars since his arrest was a part of a larger-scale sting operation that resulted within the arrest of many harmful criminals: “They didn’t simply arrest my dad. They arrested an entire bunch of individuals. It was a part of a cartel. They have been the low males within the operation.” The coastal neighborhood was left shaken by the surprising crime, however Williamson knew his father was solely making an attempt to assist him and his family members; he would use this darkish and sophisticated time in his household’s historical past as direct inspiration for The Waterfront, revealing to ScreenRant:
“I used to be impressed by my dad, the best man who ever lived, and he was making an attempt to place me by school. He was making an attempt to help his household, and he decided. And he in the end was caught, and he paid the worth, and he went to jail.”
Holt McCallany (Mindhunter) had some fairly large footwear to fill when tackling the position of Harlan Buckley, since he was closely based mostly on Williamson’s precise father, and the actor advised Tudum he felt an intense “duty” to correctly play somebody so necessary to Williamson. “I knew it was a deeply private story for Kevin and that I had a crucially necessary half in that story. I actually wished to do the position justice.” Primarily based on the response from audiences and critics to this point, McCallany has greater than risen to the event when taking part in the advanced household man.
Wade handed away earlier than manufacturing on The Waterfront was totally accomplished, however all eight episodes of the engrossing crime drama pay tribute to the person who powerfully formed Williamson’s private {and professional} life. The collection has steadily climbed Netflix’s Prime 10 TV Reveals listing and presently sits on the quantity two spot, additional cementing Williamson’s standing as one of many leisure trade’s most enjoyable visionaries. Williamson spoke of his newest small-screen triumph to Tudum and mirrored on what his father would consider the completed product:
“I believe he can be so thrilled. I’m sorry he’s not right here as a result of I believe he would like to be sitting right here watching Holt play him. I believe Holt is the right model of what I believe he can be regardless that it’s fictionalized. He carries the swagger that my dad had. He has that humorousness that my dad had and the dryness.”
Stream The Waterfront on Netflix