The True Story Behind Netflix’s Coastal Family Drama The Waterfront

The dock was quiet with the kind of stillness that settles just before dawn. Fishing boats bobbed in the tide, hulls worn and sun-bleached, their nets folded like sleeping limbs. For Kevin Williamson, it wasn’t just a familiar sight, it was a decades-old memory. This was the world he knew as a child growing up in the small town of Oriental, N.C., a place where everyone was seemingly related to everyone, where seafood came straight off the boat, and where the tides governed life as much as the church bells or school calendar.