‘The Waterfront’ Creator Kevin Williamson Reveals How the Finale’s Wild Twists Could Bleed Into Season 2

[Editor’s note: The following contains major spoilers for The Waterfront.]

Creator Kevin Williamson has returned to North Carolina for the Netflix series The Waterfront, to tell the story of the Buckley family and the fishing empire they’re trying to keep afloat. To keep the business running, family patriarch Harlan (Holt McCallany) and his son Cane (Jake Weary) get in deep running drugs for some unsavory individuals that just keep sinking them further. At the same time, Belle (Maria Bello) has other ideas for her family that Harlan is against and daughter Bree (Melissa Benoist), who’s struggling to stay clean, thinks the answer is turning in her own brother, not knowing the extent of the rest of her family’s involvement.

Not only was Williamson born in North Carolina himself, but The Waterfront was inspired by his own father, who was a fisherman that got caught smuggling drugs for cash and went to prison. The series also shoots in the same location as another Williamson-created series, Dawson’s Creek, which shares some of the same crew.

During this one-on-one interview with Collider, the showrunner discussed what he loves about the Buckley family, finding the truth in this story, the importance of the right casting, allowing the actors room to find their characters, why he decided not to kill anyone in the core family (yet!), Topher Grace’s lovable psycho villain, and how Belle might take control in a possible Season 2. Willamson also talked about why he had to convince himself to direct Scream 7, shifting the focus back to Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), and the challenge of keeping the twists a secret.

While the Buckley Family in ‘The Waterfront’ is Broken, They Do Still Love Each Other

“It’s not fun to write about happy people.”

Collider: This is a family that loves each other all the time but also hates each other some of the time. What made you want to tell the story of the Buckley family?

KEVIN WILLIAMSON: Isn’t that every family? I haven’t met a family yet that loves each other all the time. Some days, you just wake up and go, “I hate you,” but you know that that’s going to pass. I wanted to tell a story that is rooted in love and that’s rooted in the family connection. They’re a broken family. It’s not fun to write about happy people. You want to write about people who are damaged and broken and are trying to find a way to fix themselves and each other. I just wanted to tell a complicated story about a family. Growing up in the South, I know this world a little bit and I just wanted to live in that crime family drama space.

Does it feel like the key to getting viewers to want to tune in to characters like this is making the characters likable, even when they’re doing unlikable things, and then also hiring actors that are just really likable and fun to watch?

WILLIAMSON: That’s what I want to see when I turn on the TV. I don’t want to turn on the TV and see myself. I want to turn on the TV and see somebody else. It’s not that I set out to write likable characters, but you want to root for people, no matter what baggage they have or what damage they have. You want them to overcome and get through whatever conflict they have. And casting is always important. Casting is so very, very, very important.

This feels like a series that’s adjacent to Dawson’s Creek. It feels like if we drove another town over, the Buckleys might not live far away from those other characters.

WILLIAMSON: That’s very true. It’s filmed in the exact same spot that we filmed Dawson’s Creek. Some of the locations are the same. We were shooting and I was, “Wait, I think this is where Tamara kissed Pacey on the pier,” and suddenly, I was taken back to an episode of Dawson’s Creek. That’s how familiar it all was.

Was there something fun about revisiting that world, but then also pushing some of that town’s residents into a life of crime?

WILLIAMSON: It was fun. I love North Carolina. I love Wilmington, and the Southport area has been so good to me. We shot Dawson’s there, we shot I Know What You Did Last Summer there, and now this show, so it is like going home again. A lot of the crew that I work with now worked on Dawson’s Creek. There’s such a family vibe to it all that it just makes work comfortable and easy and familiar and like a place you really want to go to.

Kevin Williamson’s Own Father Inspired His Latest TV Series ‘The Waterfront’

“I grew up the son of a fisherman in a town about two and a half hours away from where we filmed the show.”

You’ve said that this story was inspired by your father, who was a fisherman that had his own issues with the law. What was the seed that he planted that let this show bloom into what it is now?

WILLIAMSON: You find the truth in something, and it’s always inspired by something in your life or something you’ve read or something you’ve seen or something you’ve lived and experienced. I grew up the son of a fisherman in a town about two and a half hours away from where we filmed the show. My dad was a fisherman, and in the ‘80s, it was a tough time for fishermen with the overfished waters and the imports business starting to bloom internationally and government quotas and all the things that happened to save the ocean, so it was hard to make a living. 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.

You have such a great group of actors making up the family at the heart of this, with Maria Bello, Holt McCallany, Jake Weary and Melissa Benoist. How much of the characters that we see now are exactly what you envisioned from the beginning, and how much have they melded with what those actors have brought to the characters?

WILLIAMSON: If you cast right, they’ll do the work for you. You put it on the page and you have one thing in your head, and then you try to find the essence of that character in the actors that you’re working with. If they have a body of work, I know they can act. What I really want to do is talk to them and find out what makes them tick and where they come from. When you’re doing a series, you’re likely going to tell a story that ebbs and flows through many seasons and many different chapters. I talk to them and try to find out what makes them tick, why they’re connected to this role, what their personality is, what kind of sense of humor they have, what makes them cry, what still hurts them. I try to do a little psychology and a little therapy session with these people because it’s such a short amount of time, and then you have to cast them.

You try to figure out who they are and what makes them tick, throw them in the role, and then see what they do with it, how they take it, and how they try on the many different layers of the character. I figure out what really works and pops and I lean in, so that I can go write for that character and that actor. I know exactly what kind of joke they would tell and exactly what kind of story I can. It really helps to get to the emotional core of your story if you can have that luxury, and doing eight episodes for Netflix, you get that luxury. Holt approached Harlan in a spectacular way. He has his own backstory and his own emotional life. He’s drawing on his own life to play this character, which is awesome. I’m just leaning into that. My job is to make his Harlan as best as Harlan can be. I love working with actors. It’s always fun. It’s fun to write for actors, particularly in a series because it’s ongoing. With a movie, you write for them, you film it, and it’s over.

Everyone in this family is responsible for others getting hurt or killed. I was actually surprised they all made it out alive, although not unscathed. Had you ever thought about sacrificing anyone in the family, or was it important to keep them all together until the end of the season?

WILLIAMSON: With the core family, I just feel like there’s so much more to explore in the dynamic between them. I feel like it wasn’t time for any of them to go. Maybe in the future. Right now, I feel like we’re just getting started. I would love to see another chapter of these people and how they interact with each other. They’re not done yet. They’re so broken, and they still need to be fixed. So, I didn’t want to kill anybody yet. I killed enough people.

One of the things that I found so interesting about Topher Grace’s character is that he looks so young, but he’s just so awful. Did you always know exactly what you wanted that character to be, or did Grady evolve once you cast the role?

WILLIAMSON: When I sat down with my partner, Ben Fast, who’s an executive show, we were talking about who this character should be and we said, “It needs to be someone like Topher Grace.” We had him in mind. Ben knew him, and I had met him through the years. He’s such a likable, winning, funny man, and he’s genuine and sweet. If you take those people and hand them a gun and watch what they do with it, there’s nothing better than a fun, sweet, lovable psycho. That just makes it fun to write. It’s fun to watch. We always had Topher Grace in mind, and I think he’s spectacular. I really love him a lot. That type of character is part of the DNA of the show.

Belle Buckley Will Stand Front and Center in a Possible Season 2 of ‘The Waterfront’

“She’s pushing [Harlan] aside and standing in front of him.”

It feels like Belle is someone who should have taken things over a long time ago, but she steps up and steps in at the end of the season. What would that mean for a Season 2? How different will she be, in charge of things?

WILLIAMSON: I think she’s always been in charge of things, she’s just done it from behind. She’s done all of her dealings secretly. She’s always hidden her input. Now, she’s going to stand front and center. Before, she stood behind Harlan a little bit. She let him be the face of the operation and she guided him. She controlled him and could puppet him, to some degree. I think she’s over and done with that. Now, she’s pushing him aside and standing in front of him.

Scream is a movie that made such an impression on me with its opening sequence. That opening sequence with Drew Barrymore is something that I remember as vividly now as when I first saw it, and I’m clearly not the only person that feels that way or we wouldn’t have a franchise that’s still going. Did that make you nervous at all about directing Scream 7? Was that decision a no-brainer for you, or did you need to have a conversation with yourself about it?

WILLIAMSON: I did have to have a conversation with myself, 100%. It was not a no-brainer. When Neve [Campbell] called and the studio called and asked if I would direct it, my first thought was, “No, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no.” But I knew I had to say yes. It was the weirdest thing. In my head, I was just terrified because it’s Wes Craven. One of the reasons I moved away from the franchise after Scream 4 was because I didn’t want to do it without Wes. One part of me was saying no, but I knew yes was going to come out of my mouth. And so, I said yes. It was such a weird, surreal moment.

How is the edit of that going? What are you excited for fans to experience?

WILLIAMSON: I’m excited because I love Neve Campbell so much and I love the cast. I’m just totally immersed in Sidney Prescott, who she is, everything she’s been through, and all these different incarnations of her life, as seen through the entire franchise. And now, what I love about this movie is that we get to go home with her and see who she is today, and how she’s raising her children, and what kind of person lives through everything she’s lived through, and still manages to wake up and get out of bed and be a mother, and to be a business owner, and to be all of these things. What does she do when Ghostface comes calling? It’s just another way to tell the story. What I love about Scream is that it can take so many different avenues. Now that it’s a franchise, we can go to New York, we can go to a small town, we can go anywhere we want. It’s opened and expanded beyond just Woodsboro, California, and that’s what I love about Scream. It’s broadened and it’s grown and it keeps going. There’s never one killer. There’s always a new killer and a new motive. We have that mystery element. That’s what I love about Scream. That’s what I wanted it to be, and I’m so blessed that it became what it became.

How long will we have to wait to see a trailer?

WILLIAMSON: Oh, I don’t know. That’s a good question. I’m still editing. That’s the next phase.

Kevin Williamson Says It’s Not Easy to Keep the Twists of ‘Scream 7’ a Secret

“Let’s not fool ourselves.”

Does it feel harder now to keep the secrets that you want to keep? With the anticipation and speculation around Scream 7, does it make it harder to surprise people, or is it easier to know how to misdirect them?

WILLIAMSON: It’s really hard. It’s Scream 7. Let’s not fool ourselves. How do you do that? It’s a challenge. You want the audience to be scared and you want them to have a good time, but Scream is a lot more than that. It’s comedic, it’s dramatic, it’s emotional, and it’s scary, but it’s hard to keep all that alive. You just work really hard to try to keep it fresh and to keep the turns and twists coming.

The Waterfront is available to stream on Netflix. Check out the trailer: