'The Waterfront' True Story: Breaking Down the Crime the Netflix Show Is Based On
The Buckleys and their fishing empire were inspired by series creator Kevin Williamson's own family and North Carolina upbringing.
“I always write about what I know,” Kevin Williamson, creator of the new Netflix series The Waterfront, told Tudum in June 2025. That’s an ideology he employed while creating his hit 2000s series Dawson’s Creek and Vampire Diaries, and now extends to his latest North Carolina-set show. But this series, starring Holt McCallany, Maria Bello, and Melissa Benoist, is much more personal than just centering on the location of his childhood. The Waterfront follows a failing family fishing business that is forced to smuggle drugs illegally via their boats to save their company—a storyline that mirrors Williamson’s childhood.
While Harlan Buckley (played by McCallany) is part of a deeper crime syndicate on the show, Williamson maintains his father was “a very, very good man [who] got tempted to do some things that weren’t so legal and got in some trouble.”
Williamson has admitted that even beyond the crime at the center of the show, The Waterfront’s plot and characters draw from his childhood in coastal North Carolina. Below is a breakdown of the true story and inspirations behind The Waterfront, which is now streaming on Netflix.
What is the true story that inspired 'The Waterfront?'
The Buckley's fishing empire is inspired by creator Kevin Williamson's family of fishermen.
Though much of The Waterfront is fictionalized, Williamson did grow up in a fishing community, surrounded by fishermen, and his father was arrested on drug charges in his childhood. “I come from a family of fishermen—not just my father, but the entire family,” he told TIME. “Everyone I knew was a fisherman.” But when the industry began drying up in the ‘80s due to overfishing and environmental regulations, his dad, Wade, became desperate to make ends meet and began using his boats to run drugs. “Someone came along and said, ‘If you do this one thing, you can make all this money.’ And it was hard to say no,” the showrunner recalled. Williamson’s father was arrested for “conspiracy to traffic marijuana—20,000 pounds,” an event that has stayed with the writer for years.
While Wade served less than a year in prison, Williamson said the effect reverberated throughout their small community. “They didn’t just arrest my dad. They arrested a whole bunch of people. It was part of a cartel. They were the low men in the operation,” he explained to TIME.
Still, Williamson accepts this as part of his family’s history and acknowledges how his father’s sacrifices ultimately gave him the life he has today. “It put food on the table, helped me go to college,” he recalled to Tudum.
This isn’t the first time Kevin Williamson has drawn inspiration from his dad’s life.
Close watchers may notice that Williamson has used this piece of family history in his work before. In the Dawson’s Creek pilot, Joey Potter (Katie Holmes) reveals that her dad is serving time for the same crime. “That was the beginning of me fictionalizing it, but I always knew I’d come back to it,” Williamson said.
Where was 'The Waterfront' filmed?
In The Waterfront, the Buckleys must deal with a mysterious newcomer to Havenport, played by Topher Grace.
Williamson grew up in the oceanside town of Oriental, North Carolina, which served as the inspiration for The Waterfront’s fictional location, Havenport. The show was filmed in Southport, where Williamson filmed his classic slasher film, 1997’s I Know What You Did Last Summer.
To transform Southport, the production team rented fishing boats from Oriental and mirrored some of the restaurants to match the aesthetic of Williamson’s hometown. “Southport looks very much like how I grew up. It’s a seafood fresh-off-the-boat type of town,” he told TIME. “That’s where I got the idea for the Buckley fish house. It’s common in little port towns: restaurants attached to fish houses.”
Are the characters in 'The Waterfront' based on real people?
Belle Buckley (Maria Bello) is loosely inspired by the showrunner's mother.
The gruff patriarch Harlan is largely lifted directly from Williamson’s father. “Holt [as Harlan] has the exact same straight John Wayne persona [as my dad],” Williamson told TIME. “That sense of humor, where he can just throw out a line, and it’s funny.”
Meanwhile, Belle, the matriarch portrayed by Bello, is “a testament to Williamson’s love for his mother,” according to Tudum.
The two adult children of the series, Bree (played by Melissa Benoist) and Cane (Jake Weary), are variations of Williamson himself. Bree speaks to the “extreme” addictive parts of himself, whereas Cane is how he imagines himself had he stayed in the small fishing town.
Kevin Williamson always planned to tell his father’s life story.
Williamson has said Holt McCallany plays patriarch Harlan Buckley with a similar attitude as his late father had.
Though Williamson has dabbled in telling this story before, he has always wanted to tell the full, darker story eventually. “I wanted to wait until my dad died,” Williamson told TV Insider. “I told him, ‘When you die, I’m gonna tell your story.’ He was always like, ‘Okay.’”
But during the pandemic, the significant amount of alone time gave Williamson the itch to start writing this story earlier than planned. His father was on board, but now sad that he wouldn’t get to see his life story fictionalized for the screen. “He was like, ‘Oh, I wish you had told the story a lot sooner than now. I’m not gonna be around for it,’” Williamson recalled.
Unfortunately, his father was right—Wade died in October 2020. “A beautiful, gentle, wickedly funny, kind, call’s it like he sees it, fisherman,” Williamson’s tribute read. “He spent his life making sure I had a better one. A king, a superhero, and my Dad.”
