There is this game that is commonplace, although its exact origins are unknown: sit in a public space—a park, a waiting room, ideally a restaurant—and observe. Consider the quality of  people’s clothing, their body language, the tone with which they speak to their companions, the ease of their smiles. And then, upon these observations, build an impression, a story. The couple in the corner are on their third date, but she doesn’t find his jokes very funny. The older gentleman doesn’t mind eating alone. The little girl’s father is tired but wants to make her birthday special. It’s amusing to plant oneself in this gauzy fantasy where the lives of strangers are as translucent as the air between you, where their relationships and pasts are right out there on your dinner plate, but unfortunately, the stories we build from the outside are almost always false. Eventually, we must face the uncomfortable truth that people, in all their complexity, are never what they seem.

For example, take a family—attractive, charismatic, and spectacularly wealthy—who are harboring a myriad of ugly truths; such is the case in the Netflix drama series, The Waterfront. Created by Kevin Williamson, the show follows the Buckley family as they fight, using all means necessary and unnecessary, to preserve their North Carolina fishing empire, only to bury themselves deeper and deeper beneath familial and criminal chaos. Peyton, daughter-in-law to patriarch Harlan Buckley, observes the family from afar, pushed to the outskirts, her entire world ripped out from under her, holding tightly to plans of her own.

Danielle Campbell feels as though she understood Peyton Buckley from her very first reading, right to the core of what makes her tick beneath that perfectly coiffed hair and four-inch heels. Born in Hinsdale, Illinois, the bubbly 30-year-old actor fell into the industry at the age of 10 through a somewhat unusual chain of events. Although she had no prior experience on stage or the big screen, she tells me she was always outgoing, eager to entertain. While chatting up the patrons of a Chicago hair salon, Campbell was offered a meeting with a local talent agency, and from there, she was thrown headfirst into a new and unfamiliar world. “I’m so grateful for it, the people that I’ve worked with and gotten to know. A lot of my education has definitely been on-screen, but getting to tell stories–I think that is something I was born to do, and I’m continuing to develop a sense of confidence in that statement.”

Campbell booked her first role through a local hire audition in 2006 as a guest star in the crime drama series Prison Break. The show was shot in an abandoned prison-turned-wearhouse which, for 10-year-old Campbell, was the single most exciting experience of her life and the moment she fell in love with her career. “There are so many stories to tell. I think I just love the limitless boundaries that exist as an art form in film and TV,” she says. “ Expression is something that we as humans have done since tribal times. Each kid that grows into an adult is continuing this experience of being a human and learning what that means for them.”

Two years later, Campbell was cast as Darla in the heart-wrenching independent film, The Poker House (2008) opposite Jennifer Lawrence and Chloë Grace Moretz. Those whose childhoods rang with the iconic Disney Channel jingle may recognize the actor from the series Zeke and Luther in which she played Dani before starring in the Disney movie Starstruck (2010) later that same year. Upon the film’s release, she signed a development deal with Disney and went on to become Simone Daniels in their 2011 film, Prom. Perhaps her most prominent role to date was that of Davina Claire, the powerful harvest witch from the French Quarter of New Orleans in The CW series The Originals, a spinoff of The Vampire Diaries which gained a tremendous following during its five seasons on air. Campbell went on to star alongside Paul Wesley in Tell Me a Story, a psychological series that explores the dark side of beloved fairy tale characters. She made her Broadway debut in the production of Alice Childress’s Trouble in Mind in 2021, and in 2024, she appeared in The Rookie, a police procedural television series. 

With 20 years of acting experience under her belt, Campbell considers Peyton Buckley her most “serious” role to date, set amidst the somber atmosphere of The Waterfront, where murder is applaudable, crime is a necessity, and betrayal is inevitable.

“I remember when I read for Peyton, I just got her right away. I understood how much she loved her husband but recognized their complicated relationship with the family. Peyton signed up to be a part of it all and has been for the last 10 years. I loved that about her right away.” It was important to both Campbell and Williamson that Peyton avoid the stereotypes of a traditional Southern housewife: “She’s a powerful presence that’s not overtly in your face. She’s a rooted, grounded character, and she’s been watching power her whole life and how it fluctuates. Peyton has an understanding of both sides at all times.”

As part of what Campbell amusedly refers to as her “high-maintenance process,” she zeroed in on Peyton’s clothing, her heels, and her physicality. “She doesn’t just casually walk down the street. She is purposefully walking, and she knows that heads are turning towards her. Her hair is probably tipped at the ends with highlights every other week, and it’s all these little things that added to the full dimension of Peyton.” To Campbell, fashion has the capacity to control what aspects of a character are revealed at each given moment, just as much as it controls which elements are kept hidden.

There is much concealed beneath Peyton’s exterior image: a trophy wife, a woman wronged and set on revenge. It is her sense of empathy that is one of her greatest strengths. “I think that softness is such a superpower when you can access it because Peyton is dealing with an unfathomable set of circumstances. She is [the  kind of] woman, at least in this first season, I want to grow up to be. She says what she thinks as she feels it, without needing to punish somebody right away. I think that’s a powerful woman.”

While the series is set in the fictional town of Havenport, North Carolina, filming took place in Wilmington and Southport. Campbell describes the beauty of the landscape and the kindness of the local people with a smile. She turned to relatives and family friends from the South, asking questions in order to embellish her understanding of Peyton’s character. She refers to her life on set as “an adult summer camp” during which her castmates, including Melissa Benoist, Maria Bello, Holt McCallany, and Jake Weary, prioritized building chemistry on and off set. This camaraderie quickly developed into a bond close to family– the closest Campbell has felt to any colleagues throughout the entirety of her career. She reminisces on dinner parties, time spent in each other’s company that built a sense of trust, allowing the actors to feel comfortable exploring an intense range of emotions without fear of hurting someone’s feelings. There was no timidness amongst them, only a desire to be immersed in the vigorous ups and downs of their characters’ lives.

In a surprising shift of power, Campbell’s favorite and final scene in the series’ first season leaves Peyton, dressed in all red, with the upper hand. “I think what’s really cool about Kevin’s stories is that we all, when we meet people for the first time, have an initial understanding of who they might be. We have our own judgments that we’re placing onto them, but over the time of getting to know them and watching people in different dynamics, you get to explore somebody else’s reactions and how they play their hand.” The rest of the Buckleys have passed her off as an unassuming presence, but it is Peyton who truly holds the cards. “I’m talking about it like it’s a poker game, but she doesn’t need to bluff. She’s got a lot happening in her hand, and she’s ready to show what she’s got in front of her.”

Campbell dubs Peyton the double-sided coin, undefinable by just her upward face. The actor herself is a sort of double-sided coin, a jack-of-all-trades to keep with her card analogies. From Disney teen to all-powerful witch to wife-done-dirty she shapeshifts against all expectations. She is a world traveler, a visual artist, a woman who still dreams of fulfilling her childhood fantasy of playing an astronaut, a spy, and a female Indiana Jones. But Danielle Campbell plays her own game. She roots herself in reality, hard at work with her next project in mind and the intention to build stories of her own.

Photographed by Steven Lyon

Styled Justice Jackson

Written by Emma Raff

Hair: Ryan Richman

Makeup: Toby Fleischman