Is The Waterfront based on a true story? Here’s what creator Kevin Williamson revealed

Netflix's new family crime series The Waterfront has already caused widespread interest—not just for its setting in a morally gray underworld, but for the very real question that hangs over its narrative: is it a true-story show? With genre-defying writer/creator Kevin Williamson, who has worked on Scream and Dawson's Creek, to name just two, guiding it, many are naturally keen to know if this new series is based on fact or complete fiction.

The speculation isn't entirely baseless. In an interview with the New York Post, Kevin Williamson confirmed that the show is half-based on actual events from his own life—his father's history, specifically. He said,

"It was sort of loosely inspired by my own family and my dad – and growing up in the ‘80s as the son of a fisherman"

But he was adamant: the show isn't a true story, a documentary-style biopic about real events. Instead, it's a fictionalized family drama built upon the emotional and environmental realities he grew up with.

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The Waterfront: Drawing from real life, but not founded on it

Williamson discovered that his father was a fisherman and, in the 1980s, had served time in prison for low-level drug-smuggling offenses. As per The New York Post, he said,

"a fisherman who got into a little trouble smuggling some drugs on his fishing boat. But it was really small time stuff,”

Williamson explained that his father was not an old-style criminal but a man who made difficult choices to provide for his family. These vignettes were the human heart of The Waterfront, but the storyline, characters, and situations of the program are entirely fictional.

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Harlan Buckley: A fictional patriarch

The Waterfront's lead, Harlan Buckley, is played by Holt McCallany—Dermot Mulroney, not as some early misunderstanding may have suggested. Harlan is a fictional figure, a guy who builds an underworld empire on the waterfront while trying to hold together his dysfunctional family life. His story touches upon questions of legacy, survival, and moral ambiguity, but he is not meant to be a copy of Williamson's old man.

Williamson has maintained all along that the Buckley family and the world they inhabit exist for story purposes. While there are emotional equivalencies between the patriarch's struggles and Williamson's own life with his father, the character isn't a one-to-one counterpart.

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Emotional truth vs. literal truth

One of Williamson's core themes is that The Waterfront is an emotionally true show. The show isn’t factual, but it aims to be emotionally true in tone, relationships, and conflict.

This mode of telling—a fable grounded in real feeling—is familiar but necessary to the reading of The Waterfront. Williamson used his memories and family history not to retell them, but to underlie the creation of a totally invented narrative.

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Not marketed as a true story

Notably, The Waterfront doesn't claim to be "based on a true story." Netflix and Williamson have both been coy about describing the series as "inspired by real events," the label that leaves open to artistic interpretation exactly what that entails. The advertising avoids making any overt claims about factual underpinnings, instead emphasizing the emotional and thematic appeal of the series.

This approach allows the show to tap into actual emotions and actual places while maintaining the liberty of an entirely fictional script. In a time of hybrid narratives, the show is adopting a familiar trend—harnessing real experience to make it more relatable without crossing over into biographical drama.

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To answer the key question: The Waterfront is not in the least a factual show in any traditional sense. It is a dramatized program based on Kevin Williamson's own life, but only and particularly the aspects surrounding his father's existence as a fisherman and short-lived periods of drug-smuggling. Holt McCallany's on-screen persona is a construct, and the narrative of the show is a dramatized version of broader emotional and social issues, not a factual recounting of real events.

For viewers attracted to gritty family drama with emotional depth, the show can be uncannily real. Yet at its core, it is a made-up story drawn from experience, not a predestined one.

Also read: The Waterfront cast and character guide: Who plays whom in Netflix's upcoming drama show?