There are an endless amount of TV heartthrobs who had Us swooning while their shows were on air — but some small-screen crushes aren’t quite as lovable in hindsight.
Mark-Paul Gosselaar’s Zack Morris was an instant teen idol when Saved by the Bell premiered on NBC in 1989. The series, which also starred Lark Voorhies, Tiffani Thiessen, Mario Lopez, Elizabeth Berkley and Dustin Diamond, followed Zack as he led his pals on adventures at California’s Bayside High School. While his bleach-blonde hair, acid-wash jeans and snarky attitude made him a fan favorite at the time, his once-lovable schemes were eventually reevaluated as problematic.
Over the course of the show’s four seasons, Zack’s bad behavior included faking a terminal illness to win a kiss from his crush, body-shaming dates, dumping a girl for coming to his rescue in a fight and appropriating Native American culture, just to name a few. Gosselaar, however, found one particular early season 1 episode hardest to shoot.
“There was one where I was basically whoring out Lisa Turtle,” he explained during a 2023 episode of the “Pod Meets World” podcast. “I charged people to kiss her without her consent. That was a tough one, which we had to preface the episode by saying, ‘We do not condone this. We’re here just to discuss it, but this is in the past.’”
Titled “The Lisa Card,” the episode centered on Zack trying to “help” Lisa as she panicked about going over her dad’s credit card limit. In an effort to assist, Zack charged boys in their grade $1 each to “lose their Lisa cards,” i.e., kiss Lisa without her consent.
Saved by the Bell returned with a revival in 2021, with Zack as the elected governor of California who found himself in trouble after he closed down a bunch of low-income high schools and sent the students to higher-performing schools, like Bayside, instead. While Gosselaar told Entertainment Tonight in 2020 that he couldn’t “wait” to get back into character, he also admitted that Zack isn’t the easiest person to portray.
“I was taking the week we had before the lockdown to get back into the character, to understand him, because there is a way that he says things and if you say it in the wrong way, it can come off very douchey,” he recalled. Gosselaar added that while his son on the show, Mack — played by Mitchell Hoog— was following in his dad’s footsteps, the new iteration was much more careful in how it approached the Morris family’s signature pranks and gags.
“The actor who plays my son, Mitchell Hoog, I think he’s brilliantly cast, and he does a really good job of toeing that line,” Gosselaar said. “Saying things that are offensive, but if you say them in the light of the Zack Morris way, it’s effervescent and you can’t take offense to it.”
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