Dustin Diamond was “trapped” in his role as Screech on the hit ‘90s sitcom “Saved by the Bell,” a role he never fully escaped before a three-week battle with cancer ended his life.
Behind the scenes, insiders say the struggles went beyond typecasting.
Despite the show’s massive success, the former child star was left with low residuals, a reality that deepened the toll of being forever boxed in as one of TV’s ultimate geeks.
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Diamond’s rise to stardom and the chaos he faced before his 2021 death at age 44 are being explored in Investigation Discovery’s “Hollywood Demons.” In “After the Bell,” the series examines how the sitcom’s clean-cut image was tainted by a wave of scandals.
“I think that Dustin was trapped in a place where that’s all he really knew, that lovable, dorky character,” Ed Alonzo, who played Max in the sitcom, told Fox News Digital.
“Even the movies and TV shows that he did after that, they always had him depicting the same type of character, or they would have him play himself, the actor who played the dorky kid,” Alonzo shared. “I think that was really difficult for him to find his own way.”
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“Saved by the Bell” aired from 1989 to 1993, and its related shows included “Saved by the Bell: The College Years,” “Good Morning, Miss Bliss” and “Saved by the Bell: The New Class,” which Diamond starred in. Despite being one of the franchise’s most consistent faces, Diamond wasn’t exactly cashing in.
In 2001, Diamond declared bankruptcy. His friend Dan Block said in the episode that Diamond “lost his house, lost everything” because he wasn’t paying the mortgage. Diamond moved to a small town in Wisconsin, but was still struggling to make ends meet. In the episode, Block said that in 2022, Diamond received a residual check of $12.74 from his time on the show.
“We were paid so low on the show,” Alonzo claimed. “I remember when I first got hired, it seemed to me that I was the highest-paid person on the show for a few episodes. And the reason was that I had just come from performing a Las Vegas run where I was making a certain amount of money. And the manager I had at the time, when they did decide that they wanted to make a deal with me as Max, he said, ‘He’s got to make at least the same money that he’s making in Vegas.'”
“I remember being on the set and talking to some of the other parents [of the cast members],” Alonzo recalled. “They were all kind of shocked at the amount of money that the kids were making. And I kind of kept quiet because I didn’t want to say anything. I felt so horrible.”
Alonzo’s good deal didn’t last for long, he claimed.
“I guess it was about seven episodes in that they came back to my manager, and they made some changes,” he said. “They wanted to eliminate me from the show, but it was a bargaining tool to get me to work for the same rate as everyone else. Now, I didn’t really know exactly what the others were making until the documentary came out [but] that’s the same kind of money that I was making at the time.”
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Diamond’s father, Mark Diamond, said in the episode that despite his son’s fame, the money barely lasted once expenses piled up.
“Dustin’s agent would take out her 10% commission,” he explained. “Anything left over, we had to cover certain things like taxes. Gasoline, obviously. Headshots. Every fan letter wanted the same thing. ‘Can you send us an 8×10 picture autographed?’ Thousands of letters. We had to pay for that. This didn’t leave much money to do anything. In fact, nothing.”
In his later years, Diamond was sued several times for delinquent taxes and in foreclosure proceedings for missing mortgage payments, The Associated Press reported. He appeared on several reality TV shows, made a sex tape and produced a tell-all documentary on Lifetime. In 2015, he was sentenced to serve four months in jail for his part in a barroom stabbing.
“Years after ‘Saved by the Bell’ was done, he tried to do stand-up comedy and work in comedy clubs,” said Alonzo. “That’s incredibly difficult to do. If you haven’t worked on that your whole life, it’s not going to be as easy as memorizing a script and trying to make that funny. You have to write jokes and entertain audiences that are live right in front of you. That’s a whole other quest to conquer.”
In 2009, Diamond’s memoir, “Behind the Bell,” was published. Though he later insisted a ghostwriter fabricated many of the book’s most scandalous claims about his former co-stars, the damage was done.
“I was still friends with all the kids,” said Alonzo. “Of course, I got the book and checked it out. And right away, I realized a lot of the stories there were made up. They never happened. I think they wanted to make a book that would seem more controversial to sell copies. But I think the public also saw through it.”
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“The kids were really upset about it,” Alonzo said. “There were some things in there that were just horrible. I know with some shows that have kids in them, maybe they do have other problems and chaos going on. But in the early years when I was there, I never saw any chaos with the kids. I never saw anything that would be abusive or lead to an unhappy place. Everybody was happy.”
In the mid-2010s, Diamond appeared in a string of low-budget commercials for Insurance King alongside Block, the company’s founder. In the episode, Block claimed Diamond was making more from the ads than he was from his “Saved by the Bell” residuals. Block said he also bought Diamond a car and helped him see his father for the first time in 15 years after being estranged.
“The thing that I think changed was [the show] going into syndication,” Alonzo said. “It would sometimes play five or more times a day on a specific channel. And so, those residuals would build up a little bit, but we’re still not talking about real showbiz money. We’re talking about very, very low amounts of money, almost what would’ve been considered a minimum wage for actors. And a big part of that was the fact that it was on a Saturday morning and not in primetime. And that made a huge difference to the scale that was paid.”
In 2019, Mark-Paul Gosselaar, who played Zack Morris on “Saved by the Bell,” appeared on “Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen.” At the time, he said the cast wasn’t getting paid very much from the show’s syndication deals.
“We made really bad deals,” he said. “Poor deals back then. It is what it is. You move on, you learn. Great experience.”
A “Saved by the Bell” reboot was launched on Peacock in 2020, featuring many members of the original cast. Diamond was not included.
In the episode, Block claimed that Lark Voorhies, who played Lisa Turtle, was the only “Saved by the Bell” alum to reach out to Diamond as he battled an aggressive form of cancer.
“[Lark] was a really good person, and she left a voicemail for him, and we played it for him before he died,” said Block. “He enjoyed it. She was the only one who really reached out to him, and [it was] really heartfelt. I know they had a connection.”
“That was my very good friend,” said Voorhies, 52, in the episode. “I miss him.”
Alonzo said there are still lessons to be learned from Diamond’s rise and downfall.
“The sad thing is, I think for child actors, especially the ones who become super famous like Dustin, they blow up huge, but they become so typecast with those characters. It seems more common among young actors who play a nerdy, offbeat character. I never see it happen as much to the ones who are playing the leading man or leading lady characters, even in young genres. But I do think with someone like Dustin, they really do have to fight for what they want.”
“He was just a nice, friendly, lovable guy when I met him,” Alonzo reflected. “I never saw anything that would make me think that his future was going to be dark. Never would’ve suspected that.”
“Hollywood Demons” airs May 4 at 9 p.m.
