Saved by the Bell Cast: Where Are They Now in 2026
Saturday mornings on NBC belonged to a fictional Los Angeles high school for four years straight. From August 1989 to May 1993, roughly 130 episodes turned six teenagers and one long-suffering principal into household names. The Saved by the Bell cast wasn’t made up of trained Hollywood veterans — most were kids who aged up in front of millions, and the show that started as a flop spin-off of a Disney Channel series called Good Morning, Miss Bliss became one of the most rerun teen comedies ever made.
The Bayside crew in their original NBC promo shoot — teal, florals, and hairspray included.
How the Saved by the Bell cast turned a Saturday-morning flop into a phenomenon
Here’s the part most people forget: the network barely believed in it. NBC slotted Saved by the Bell into the kids’ programming block instead of primetime, which usually meant a smaller budget and zero prestige. The Saved by the Bell cast turned that limitation into the whole appeal. Zack Morris talked directly to the camera and froze time, the laugh track ran hot, and the plots ran on pure sugar — a garage band called Zack Attack, a beach-club summer, a homecoming queen scandal every other week.
The truth is, the show was never trying to be great television. It was trying to be comfort food — the same lane that made crazes like Pogs and the Tamagotchi impossible to escape in the same era, and it nailed that better than almost anything from the era. That’s why it survived in syndication for decades while flashier shows vanished — the same staying power that keeps fans ranking the best episodes of 90s TV decades later. Kids who weren’t even born in 1993 can still hum the theme song.
Mark-Paul Gosselaar then and now — the blond hair was retired, the career never slowed.
Mark-Paul Gosselaar (Zack Morris)
Gosselaar had the toughest transition on paper — how do you escape being the most famous teenager in America? He did it by working constantly and rarely playing a charmer again. A long run on the gritty cop drama NYPD Blue proved he could do drama, and from there came Franklin & Bash, the baseball series Pitch, and a recurring role on ABC’s Mixed-ish. More recently he played an unsettling abductor on NBC’s Found, about as far from Zack Morris as an actor can get.
He still has fun with it, though. He showed up as a fictional version of himself on HBO’s Barry, and in 2020 he stepped back into Zack’s shoes — this time as the governor of California — for the Peacock revival. Off camera he’s a father of four across two marriages, and he’s been open about how strange it was to grow up famous before he could legally drive.
Tiffani Thiessen then and now — from Kelly Kapowski to a White Collar lead and TV chef.
Tiffani Thiessen (Kelly Kapowski)
Kelly Kapowski was written as the unattainable dream girl, and Thiessen spent the next two decades quietly proving she was a real actor underneath the cheerleader image. She went straight from Bayside to the zip code that defined teen soap drama, joining Beverly Hills, 90210 as the scheming Valerie Malone — a deliberate hard left turn from Kelly’s good-girl routine.
From there she built a steady career: the USA Network hit White Collar, a stint on Just Shoot Me!, and eventually her own Cooking Channel show, Dinner at Tiffani’s, plus a bestselling cookbook. She married actor Brady Smith in 2005, has two kids, and came back as Kelly for the 2020 reboot. Of the original group, she arguably had the smoothest landing.
Mario Lopez then and now — the wrestling singlet traded for a permanent spot on entertainment TV.
Mario Lopez (A.C. Slater)
If anyone turned Saved by the Bell fame into a forever career, it’s Lopez. The dimpled wrestler with the curly mullet became one of the most recognizable faces in entertainment news, hosting Extra for years and then Access Hollywood. He’s the rare child star who never really left your screen — if you’ve watched any awards-show red carpet in the last 20 years, he was probably standing on it.
He’s also dabbled in game shows (the recent Blank Slate), reality TV, and podcasting, married dancer Courtney Mazza, and has three kids. Slater was the only original character besides Zack to get major reboot screen time, returning as Bayside’s football coach.
Elizabeth Berkley then and now — Jessie Spano grew into one of the most talked-about careers of the group.
Elizabeth Berkley (Jessie Spano)
Jessie Spano gave the show its single most famous scene. The “I’m so excited, I’m so scared” caffeine-pill breakdown from the episode “Jessie’s Song” is still parodied today, and it turned a Saturday-morning comedy into an accidental piece of pop-culture history. Berkley played it with a commitment the material barely deserved, and that intensity defined her next move.
In 1995 she took the lead in Showgirls, a film that was savaged on release and later reclaimed as a camp cult classic — a wild gamble for a former teen star. She kept working in films like The First Wives Club and Any Given Sunday, and returned as Jessie, now Bayside’s guidance counselor, in the revival. Whatever you think of Showgirls, betting your whole image on one role takes nerve most child actors never find.
Lark Voorhies then and now — Lisa Turtle, the shopping-obsessed style icon of Bayside.
Lark Voorhies (Lisa Turtle)
Lisa Turtle was Bayside’s fashion authority and the constant target of Screech’s hopeless crush. Voorhies kept acting through the ’90s with a long run on the soap The Bold and the Beautiful and guest spots on Family Matters and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, then gradually stepped away from the spotlight in the 2010s.
Her later years drew tabloid attention and some public health struggles, which she has spoken about candidly. She returned as Lisa — reimagined as a successful fashion designer — for the Peacock revival, a full-circle nod to the character fans remembered.
Dustin Diamond then and now — Screech Powers had the most complicated path of anyone in the cast.
Dustin Diamond (Screech Powers)
Screech was the heart and the punchline of the show, and Diamond was the only actor to appear in nearly every iteration — Good Morning, Miss Bliss, the original run, The College Years, and The New Class. That loyalty to the franchise made his later years harder to watch. He wrote a scorched-earth tell-all, did a notorious reality-TV circuit, and had a public falling-out with his former castmates.
He was not part of the 2020 reboot. In early 2021 he was diagnosed with stage-four small-cell carcinoma, and he died on February 1, 2021, at just 44 years old — only weeks after the diagnosis. His former co-stars, whatever their history, paid tribute. He was the kid who made an entire generation laugh, and the cast group photo doesn’t feel complete without him.
Dennis Haskins then and now — Mr. Belding, the principal who somehow never expelled Zack Morris.
Dennis Haskins (Mr. Belding)
Every teen show needs an authority figure to outsmart, and Richard Belding was the warm, exasperated principal who let the kids get away with everything. Haskins played him for the show’s entire run plus The New Class, becoming as central to the Bayside identity as any of the students.
He’s kept working steadily since — guest roles on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, New Girl, and others — and he’s a fixture on the nostalgia convention circuit, where Saved by the Bell fans still line up to meet Mr. Belding decades later. He turned up for a cameo in the revival, the principal emeritus of a school that never stopped needing him.
What happened with the 2020 Saved by the Bell reboot?
Peacock relaunched the franchise in November 2020 with a smarter, self-aware version created by 30 Rock alum Tracey Wigfield. The twist: Zack Morris is now the governor of California, and his budget cuts force underprivileged kids into wealthy Bayside — a setup that let the show poke fun at its own privileged origins. Gosselaar, Lopez, Thiessen, Berkley, and Voorhies all returned in some capacity.
Critics were pleasantly surprised; the revival got decent reviews and a second season before Peacock canceled it in 2022. It wasn’t the cultural juggernaut the original was, but as legacy reboots go, it was one of the more thoughtful ones — it understood the assignment instead of just cashing the nostalgia check.
Is the Saved by the Bell cast still friends?
Mostly, yes. Gosselaar, Lopez, Thiessen, and Berkley have reunited countless times — talk-show appearances, the Jimmy Fallon “Go Bayside” sketch, the reboot itself — and they speak warmly about each other. The one lasting rift was with Diamond, whose tell-all and later behavior strained those relationships, though his castmates still mourned him publicly when he died.
That mix of genuine affection and old tension is what makes a real cast, not a manufactured one. These were teenagers thrown together under studio lights for years; some bonds held, one frayed. If you grew up on Bayside, the brick-sized phones and the Zack Attack jam sessions probably hit the same nostalgia nerve as a Casio calculator watch or a beeper clipped to your jeans — the small tech totems of a very specific moment.
Sources
- Biography.com — Saved by the Bell Cast: Where Are They Now? — cast career overviews
- Entertainment Tonight — Saved by the Bell: Then and Now — then-and-now photo gallery and bios
- NBC Insider — Jimmy Fallon’s Saved by the Bell Reunion — cast reunion details
