‘The Waterfront’ finale death and season 2 hopes unpacked by star Jake Weary

This article contains spoilers from The Waterfront episodes 1-8.

Jake Weary is the star of two popular series on Netflix right now. One is The Waterfront, a new drama from showrunner Kevin Williamson (Dawson’s Creek, The Vampire Diaries), about the affluent Buckley family of Havenport, N.C., who attempt to keep their fishing empire alive by wading into criminal waters. The other is a show Weary filmed a decade ago.

Animal Kingdom, for which the New Jersey-born star played Daren Cody for six years, starting in 2016 on TNT, recently hit the streaming airwaves and racked up views on the platform. Weary acknowledges the similarities between the two titles. Like The Waterfront, Animal Kingdom centers on a prominent family, the Codys of Oceanside, Calif., and their illegal enterprises.

“With Animal Kingdom and the characters there, what they’re willing to do for money goes to lengths that are much more violent,” Weary tells Entertainment Weekly in comparing and contrasting the two sets of characters.

The actor digs into this and more in a spoiler-filled conversation about The Waterfront‘s real-life inspiration (Williamson’s own life and relationship to his late father, Wade), that big finale death scene, and his hopes for season 2.

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ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: I kept drawing parallels between Animal Kingdom and The Waterfront, just the family dynamic, the kind of rural Americana setting of it, and all the criminal enterprises.

JAKE WEARY: At first, I have to be honest, when I looked at it, I guess I was so blindsided by how different the character I would be portraying was to Daren Cody, the character I’d been portraying for six years. So I guess I overlooked the actual comparisons with the shows in general. It wasn’t until we started production where I realized these families are actually very similar in their own ways. I think they both have their backs against a wall, they both come from privilege, are highly motivated by money to some capacity, and they also have a capacity for violence. The Buckleys have a bit of self-restraint, and I think they are a little bit more intelligent about the way they go about their business, a little less fast and loose, a little more dialed in, a little more tactful.

For me, there were so many similarities to the point where I started thinking, “Did Kevin Williamson watch Animal Kingdom?”

He actually did. He actually was a big Animal Kingdom fan. Someone [at the ATX Television Festival in Austin, Tex.] asked a question and he mentioned how he binged the whole show. So he was definitely a fan, but I don’t know if that necessarily prompted any of the character development or plot development. Obviously, these are all drawn from his own personal experiences, but I think he definitely wanted to make a show that lived in that similar space, a group of anti-heroes, if you will, that you can’t take your eyes off of because they are driven to these places by classic human things that we all go through.

I was so thrown when the title card “based on a true story” came across the screen. How much of Kevin’s personal story did he share with you guys? 

It threw me as well. I didn’t know that until I met him the first day I got to North Carolina. He confided in a small group of us. The producers and Marco Siega, the director of the first two episodes, I’m sure they knew a lot more. There are specific scenes in the pilot where characters are being held over the stern of the boat and dangled amongst blood-thirsty sharks. I think that was something that happened to him personally. There are almost fever dream moments of his experiences with this material that he felt could be manifested in many different characters. So I think there are parts of him that are in Harlan [Holt McCallany], there are parts of him that are in Cane and Bree [Melissa Benoist] and Belle [Maria Bello]. Everyone shares this little piece of Kevin, which is pretty cool. 

When I heard he was pulling a lot from his father’s story, the inevitable next question was, “Is Cane a stand-in for Kevin in a lot of ways?”

We definitely talked about relationships with a son and father, and how we can portray that properly. We talked a lot about his father, my relationship with my father. I don’t know a whole lot. There were definitely things that he withheld from me, but I think we all have our own kind of f—ed up — pardon my French — relationships with our parents or our guardians, in a way. We rebel as children and we also look up to the people that are taking care of us, but there’s also parts of them that we want to try to abandon at all costs and create our own narrative for ourselves. That was important when developing the character of Cane.

What I really enjoyed about your performance is how Cane is a different character in subtle ways depending on who he’s in a scene with. How much of that were choices you made and how much of it was explicitly laid out in the script?

It’s a bit of both. Even just speaking to Kevin about all of it before we started principal photography, that was important to show all the different sides of Cane, that this isn’t someone who’s just grasping at straws, that is desperate for change. There is a part of him that the audience should see, this duality of trying to keep your family afloat but also, Who is Cane at his core? He’s sensible and he can be a bit unpredictable, but he’s also charismatic and charming in his own way. I guess I needed to divert myself from that Daren Cody mentality, where everything is that kind of brooding bad boy. There is a part of that that’s in Cane, but it was also very important for me to explore what it means to be charming. I think you need that because the audience really sees this story develop through Cane’s perspective, initially.

A lot of what Cane does is a direct response to his father. So I’m curious if meeting Holt in person for the first time and understanding how he works as a scene partner influenced a lot of your choices.

Holt is one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met in my life. He is so the classic phrase of “never judge a book by its cover.” You see him and he’s this imposing man, and he couldn’t be more kind and gracious and sensitive and intelligent. He is an encyclopedia of a human being, and he actually reminds me a lot of my own father. That was really comforting, coming onto a set and meeting someone like that that you are going to have to develop a rapport with really quickly in order for these scenes to feel genuine and authentic. His behavior on set really did inform how I portrayed Cane in these scenes with Harlan. We developed this almost wild card and the straight man, back-and-forth sarcasm and dark humor that I think really works for that relationship.

The chief spoiler portion that I wanted to ask you about is the finale, where Cane gets to shoot Grady [Topher Grace]. All throughout the season, there are so many moments where Cane could take a life, but then he always stops himself from crossing that line. Did you and Kevin talk about the specifics of what would make this character cross that line? 

There was a scene that was originally written into the series. Peyton [Danielle Campbell] has just been attacked, and there is a moment where the threshold is realized. Harlan hands Cane the crowbar to put the fear of God in these two kids who tried to murder his wife and gives him this ultimatum. Originally in the script, Cane does attack them with the crowbar. They ended up cutting that for reasons pertaining to your question, ultimately. So I think there was a big conversation in the writers’ room about whether or not we wanted to give the audience a taste of what Cane is capable of. Ultimately, they went the route of, How do we tease this throughout the season so that there’s ultimately a bigger payoff at the end when he actually does pull the trigger?

I’m really happy that they didn’t put that initial attack in episode 3 because you do see there’s a greater arc for Cane. I just think it needs to be so much more impactful in that finale episode because it opens up the door to season 2. Will this embolden him and give him more of an authoritative role in this new life, or will he revert back to this adolescence phase in trying to navigate through this life of crime? Which could still be season 2. He could be reeling from this moment of no return.

Do you think Harlan is more proud of him in that moment for making the hard decision and defending the business, or is he more proud of him for defending a family member?

I don’t think anybody really wants to see their child have to take someone’s life, but I think there is a side of Harlan that is where the proud father element is coming through to see his son protect his family and be the one to take control. In a morbidly, sociopathic way, you could say that is a full-circle moment for Cane and Harlan. The death of Grady has brought them together in a way that we never could have expected. That’s Kevin Williamson for you.

Season 2 is obviously on your mind. Have you had conversations with Kevin about where this story could go from here?

Yeah. It was actually really funny. I had to buzz my head for a project, and he had seen me with my buzzed head. He was like, “Wait! What about season 2? When did you enlist in the army?” I saw him in Texas, he was looking at me and was like, “Maybe Cane in season 2 just one day, midway through the season, buzzes his head and gets a tattoo.” I was like, “No, no, no, no! We spent so much time making sure this character was so different from a Daren Cody bad boy!” So that’s pretty much the extent of the conversations we’ve had. I think it’s bad juju to talk about story when you haven’t gotten that official pickup yet, at least for me. I border on a pessimistic person, so I really hope we get a season 2, but I hate talking about it until it’s actually a thing.

There is this massive explosion that happens when you guys infiltrate Grady’s farmhouse. Were you on set when they blew that up?

I actually was! I snuck my camera in. I’m hiding behind a tractor. I don’t even think it’s in the cut, but I had hidden my camera. They told us it was going to be a big explosion, but we didn’t know how big it was going to be. Our special effects guys on the show were just incredible throughout the whole season, and they did such an amazing job at making sure we were all in the right places at the right time and everyone was safe. Just the amount of power that came out of that explosion and how controlled it was, but also how chaotic it was simultaneously was really impressive.

In that video that I have hidden, you see me physically react to this explosion. There was no way I couldn’t have done that. I knew it was coming, and yet my body still reacted because it was right there and it was hot and massive. We even didn’t know where to go at the end because we are on camera for it. They set up a third camera on us reacting to it, and none of us really knew what to do after. I actually turned towards the other guys, and I’m like, “Let’s go this way! We’ve run out of frame.” We all were blown away, pun intended, by the spectacle of it. My 13-year-old self was just like, “I can’t believe you’re here right now on a set and there’s big explosions.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The Waterfront is streaming on Netflix now.