The ‘Saved By the Bell’ Cast Says There’s No Beef Over Dustin Diamond’s Tell-All Book

Sounds like time indeed heals all wounds, at least when it comes to the late Dustin Diamond’s tell-all book, Behind the Bell. In 2010, the actor most famous for playing Screech on Saved By the Bell went scorched earth on his former castmates, alleging that:

• Mario (Slater) Lopez brought a young woman to “his pad” where she “was forced to have sex against her will.”
• Tiffani-Amber (Kelly) Thiessen cheated on her boyfriend with both Lopez and Mark-Paul (Zack) Gosselaar. 
• Cast members were smoking weed in their dressing rooms while filming an anti-drug episode, with “a certain ‘smoke’ wafting from the crack beneath Tiffani's dressing room.”
• Elizabeth (Jessie) Berkley and Lark (Lisa) Voorhies also hooked up with Lopez and Gosselaar — but notably, not with Diamond.
• Gosselaar took steroids while filming Saved By the Bell: The College Years.
• Executive producer Peter Engel had threesomes with Thiessen and Gosselaar.

Even though Diamond had little nice to say about his Bayside High classmates, there was no need to patch things up with the actor before his death, according to Gosselaar, speaking on a panel at ‘90s Con 2025. “Just to be clear, there was nothing to be reconciled because that beef that was created was created out there, not here,” he said, according to People. 

Berkeley agreed: “One hundred percent.”

Created “out there?” Timeout, Zack — all those accusations were the product of Diamond’s book, not internet gossip. But Gosselaar says no one took offense. “He wrote a book. It was a thing. We all kind of looked at him like, ‘Oh, Dustin,’ but we never took that personally,” he explained. “None of that was personal.”

It’s nice that Gosselaar is over it, but “never took that personally”? That’s not what he told HuffPost Live in 2014. “Everything I’ve heard about his book is, it is negative,” Gosselaar said. “I don’t remember those things.”

Berkley chalks up Diamond’s resentments to youthful immaturity. “Honestly, it was more like how after high school, you keep in touch with some friends more than others,” she said at ‘90s Con, “but there was not a negative feeling.”

Diamond backtracked on his accusations years after his book was published, blaming his publishers even though he did all the initial finger-pointing. “A lot of the stories were just kind of throwaways,” he said on Oprah: Where Are They Now? in 2013. “I have nothing but good thoughts and memories toward everybody. I expected that I was going to be sent a copy to proofread and say, ‘Okay, thumbs-up or thumbs-down.’ And I was sent the (final) copy. ‘Oh, this is done.’”

Diamond never apologized for the allegations, but he at least tried to make nice with the Saved By the Bell cast during an appearance on Dr. Oz in 2016. “This is my best weapon for repairing the damage that was caused by things that were done by people who took advantage of me,” he said. “I will say, guys, I think you’re fantastic, working with you has been just one of the icons of my life. … But I’m sure that you’ve experienced downfalls as well in your time, and I’m still loving you guys.”