Saved by the Bell star Mark-Paul Gosselaar says that he hasn’t spoken to his former co-star Dustin Diamond in 25 years.
Gosselaar made the surprising revelation during a recent appearance on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen, after being asked by a viewer when the last time they talked was.
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“1994,” Gosselaar said laughing, as Cohen also giggled. “It’s the truth. I’m not making anything up.”
Notably, 1994 was the same year that Saved by the Bell: The College Years, a spin-off of the iconic teen sitcom, was cancelled after only one season.
Gosselaar previously addressed Diamond during a 2014 interview alongside his Franklin & Bash co-star, Breckin Meyer. The two were speaking with Huffpost Live when The Zack Morris actor was asked about Diamond’s tell-all book Behind the Bell.
“It is negative โ that I must say. Everything I’ve heard about his book is that it is negative, and I don’t remember those things because my experience on the show was very positive,” Gosselaar replied. ” … When people say, ‘Oh you don’t like talking about it,’ it’s like, ‘No, I don’t mind talking about it, it’s just that I don’t remember.’ But also everything I do remember was extremely positive. We still have friendships from it.”
Meyer also chimed in, as reported by ET, with much less reservation regarding his true feelings toward Diamond.
“This guy’s such a dโ,” Meyer exclaimed. “I don’t know Dustin at all, but everything I read … the Dustin Diamond thing is just so silly. It’s so negative, and it always bums me out. I know everybody from the show โฆ I know Elizabeth [Berkley], Tiffani [Thiessen], Mario [Lopez] and everyone has nothing but awesome things to say about that, except for Dustin, and I’m like, ‘That might be you, bro.’”
While he has not kept in touch with Diamond, Gosselaar seems to have been friends forever with his remaining Saved by the Bell castmates, with the actor telling an audience at the 2018 Television Critic Association’s Summer Press Tour event that he would be open to a series reunion if it was “worth everyone’s time.”
“There’s a lot of versions that we see that don’t do it justice,” Gosselaar went on to say of modern TV show reboots. “But I’d like to see a version, yeah, I’d like to see a version that we’d all agree on.”
Finally, he explained that if a reboot or reunion of the show were ever to happen, he does not know where it would air, saying, “I haven’t even thought about that.”
While fans will likely be waiting indefinitely for a Bayside High reunion, Gosselaar can next be seen in the Fox sci-fi drama The Passage, which debuts Monday, Jan. 14 at 8 p.m. ET.