Is 'The Waterfront' Based on a True Story? Meet the Real Buckley Family
The Waterfront is the most addictive show on TV right now, and that might be because—unexpected twist—it's based on a true story. Like, with some major embellishments.
The show takes place in the fictional town of Havenport, and focuses on the Buckley family's pivot from fishing to drug smuggling. At least one person dies per episode, everyone has iconic names, and the love triangles are operating on another level. In fact, there are some scenes that are almost too over-the-top—like when Harlan Buckley has someone's head dunked into shark infested waters. But turns out that one is straight from the personal memory vault of creator Kevin Williamson. Which begs the question...
Kevin's dad was a fisherman in North Carolina just like Harlan.
As he put it to Tadum, "I come from a long line of fishermen. The fishing industry sort of upturned in the '80s — it all started to go away, and my dad couldn't feed his family. So someone came along and said, 'Hey, if you do this one thing, you can make all this money.' And it was hard to say no to."
Meaning, yep, his dad ran drugs: "My dad—a very, very good man—got tempted to do some things that weren't so legal and got in some trouble," Kevin said. "[But] it put food on the table, helped me go to college."
The Scream creator also spoke to Collider about his father's time smuggling drugs, saying "My dad had a family to support, and he crossed the line. He did some drug smuggling on his boat for some fast cash. He got caught and went to prison for a little while, but he was a good man. It's like when good men do bad things. He might have gone left, but he got caught and he course corrected. He was the best father a son could ever hope for."
"I had my dad in my head. I was like, 'How do you cast Superman?'" he said. "What I found in Holt was his connection to the character. He's a bit of a mystery box. You're either going to get rugged and tough and hardcore or you're going to get vulnerable and emotional and honest. I love those qualities."
Kevin told IndieWire that "Belle was a lot of my mom. She was hard and cold when she needed to be; gentle, warm and nurturing when she needed to be. She was super in charge. My dad was a very simple but very complicated man, and he didn't show his feelings. But when he did, he felt them."
Kevin confirmed this to The Hollywood Reporter, saying his dad "Just had a boat. He was a runner. He didn't own a beach house, he didn't own a restaurant. That was all fiction. I really did embellish and exaggerate. You write what you know, but it always starts with a kernel of truth, same as Dawson's Creek. That's autobiographical, but hardly any of that happened to me."
The true story is almost as wild as The Waterfront.
Turns out Kevin's dad and uncle took him on a boat at ten years old, and his uncle held him overboard to see them.
"It was a prank that my uncle played on me," he told The Hollywood Reporter. "He was a kid, he was a punk. Once again, very good guy who just did silly — there was that one day we woke up and there were just sharks everywhere. And they had a pistol, and they were throwing chum over, and when the sharks came to the surface, they'd shoot it. Well, they'd shoot it in the head for fun. It was so awful, it was just awful. I remember I wouldn't even go to the edge and look over because I was so terrified. And the boat was (rocking). I remember my uncle said, 'I'll hold you.' And then, of course, he picked me up to held me over, like an idiot."
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