- 3 hours ago
Hollywood Demons Season 2 Episode 3
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00:00:01First, I wanted to say thank you so much for making my childhood.
00:00:04Teaching me how to be cool in high school.
00:00:06He's the young heartthrob who has teens across the country.
00:00:10Saved by the bell. Saved by the bell.
00:00:14Saved by the bell, right?
00:00:17How you doing? How you doing?
00:00:19There's a lot of people that watch this show.
00:00:29Stalking. Criminality.
00:00:30The price of fame.
00:00:32911, what's your emergency?
00:00:34To be totally honest, it was pretty bananas from the jump.
00:00:38He alleged his parents were stealing his money.
00:00:41He had a small puncture wound on his chest.
00:00:45Excuse me a second.
00:00:46Yeah.
00:00:47It was overwhelming.
00:00:49It was fake.
00:00:52Shannon's psycho fan.
00:00:56How did Saved by the bell shape you?
00:01:08But I've seen the tape.
00:01:10You're gonna die.
00:01:12This situation will never be repeated again.
00:01:25I remember sitting in my little pajamas.
00:01:30I was on my couch in my living room in Miami, Florida.
00:01:33The Saved by the bell theme came on.
00:01:41It kind of just grabbed you with those rainbows of colors.
00:01:45Lots of 90s pop art graphics.
00:01:48It's time to see the bus drive by.
00:01:50It's all right.
00:01:52Cause I'm safe out of the bell.
00:01:54It had that kind of bam, bam, bam.
00:01:56Lots of neon, geometric shapes, whizzing past.
00:02:02How can you not move to this groove?
00:02:05It just draws you in.
00:02:08Cause I'm Saved by the bell.
00:02:13Saved by the bell ran from 1989 to 1993.
00:02:17It's part of millennial core.
00:02:22It was so popular that I don't think you would have been able to find a teen in the 90s
00:02:28who didn't have a favorite character on that show.
00:02:31Every girl you knew had a crush on Zack Morris or AC Slater or wanted to be Kelly Kapowski or
00:02:37Jesse Spano or Lisa Turtle.
00:02:39Saved by the bell is a comedy meets sort of melodrama sort of fantasy about high school with a group
00:02:46of kids.
00:02:46It was colorful, vibrant, somewhat bubblegummy.
00:02:50Viewers might say that it's the school they wish they had attended.
00:02:54Where everybody gets along, everybody has an identity, everybody has a good time.
00:03:03But it's really about that cast and they could do almost anything.
00:03:08Saved by the bell followed this group of six friends and their daily lives at Bayside High.
00:03:14And the cast was made up of actual teenagers.
00:03:20It felt authentic.
00:03:22There was that age element that connected us to these characters.
00:03:26Bring them out to the stage.
00:03:27Elizabeth Berkley, Mario Lopez, and Mark Paul Gosselaar.
00:03:31The show was named one of the 20 best school shows of all time by AOL TV.
00:03:37Hi.
00:03:38Great to be here. Hello, everyone.
00:03:40People remember it with great affection.
00:03:42You're welcome.
00:03:45But that sort of glossy, lovely quality, behind that there were a few other things that were going on.
00:03:55It's a very different, more complicated and darker story.
00:04:00The executive producer who was our showrunner, a guy named Peter Engel, was a very strong born-again Christian at
00:04:06the time.
00:04:06Peter Engel is the writer and the executive producer of Saved by the Bell.
00:04:10Before that, he was in Hollywood, in the more darker, difficult parts of Hollywood, into a decadent life, doing drugs,
00:04:20dating adult film stars.
00:04:21And suddenly, one day, he saw a vision of Jesus on the beach.
00:04:29And decided he wanted to be a force for the good.
00:04:36And his quote about that,
00:04:38No one said a word when I did a thousand bucks of cocaine.
00:04:42But when I saw Jesus in Malibu, everyone said, are you crazy?
00:04:47However, I don't care if it was a cocaine psychosis.
00:04:50It was something came through and delivered a moment of clarity for him.
00:04:54So we weren't even allowed to cuss.
00:04:55But I think that's part of the innocence that made it sort of charming and maybe resonated, because it was
00:05:00a big escapism.
00:05:01In order to understand Saved by the Bell, you actually have to go back to how the show originally started,
00:05:07which was a very different show.
00:05:11Before Saved by the Bell, Peter Engel produced a Disney show called Good Morning, Miss Bliss.
00:05:21So Good Morning, Miss Bliss was going to be a Saturday morning kids show.
00:05:25And it was about Miss Bliss and her dealing with these young adolescents in middle school.
00:05:30You know, at that time, the Disney Channel was looking for more live action shows that they could put on
00:05:36their network.
00:05:36Haley Mills was attached, which I love Haley Mills.
00:05:39I'd grown up watching her in Pollyanna and Parent Trap.
00:05:42Good Morning, Miss Bliss, which is a show really about the teachers.
00:05:46And the children are there, but they are secondary characters.
00:05:49There are three cast members in this cast that you'd be more familiar with at Saved by the Bell.
00:05:54I was tasked with finding all the kids, the principal and the other teacher.
00:05:57They were very specific for the main character of Zack.
00:06:00They wanted a Ferris Bueller-type kid.
00:06:03I was like, oh, okay.
00:06:06But I was not finding that personality.
00:06:09But then I remember when Mark Paul came in, and he read, and he was the one.
00:06:15He was the kid.
00:06:18His perfectly coiffed blonde hair, which I later found out, was not a natural shade.
00:06:24His dimples, his smile.
00:06:27He had swagger.
00:06:29I mean, if you can say that about a teenager at the time, Zack Morris had swagger.
00:06:40Hi, everyone.
00:06:41I'm Max Patimo.
00:06:42And I'm formerly from Good Morning, Miss Bliss.
00:06:45And Mike Gonzalez was my character.
00:06:47And it's nice to be back on camera after 35 years.
00:06:53I just remember going in and, you know, starting out meeting the casting director, going back
00:06:58for the second and third auditions.
00:07:00And I remember telling my mom, if I get on the show, you owe me a box of C's chocolate.
00:07:05It's a really big one.
00:07:07Thirteen auditions later, I think it was, I was on Good Morning, Miss Bliss as a 13-year-old.
00:07:12I was Mikey Gonzalez, Zack's best friend.
00:07:25And this is Lark as a little baby.
00:07:30I think she's like three months in here, smiling for the camera.
00:07:37She grew up in Pasadena.
00:07:39Here's Lark at four, ballerina.
00:07:44She loved doing that.
00:07:47Lark had been a strange relationship between her and her dad.
00:07:52We were divorced when Lark was about three, four years old.
00:07:57Lark was a quiet little girl, shy.
00:08:00When I put her in ballet, she would just light up and just show off.
00:08:08I worked at Columbia Pictures.
00:08:10I became an executive secretary.
00:08:12And my daughter showed interest in getting into show business.
00:08:17She wanted to do commercials.
00:08:19She's turning 11, 12 soon.
00:08:22And I just started to get my daughter an agent and go from there.
00:08:28Problem?
00:08:29Uh, well, uh, uh...
00:08:30What do you want?
00:08:32Your G the suite...
00:08:33I remember this scene.
00:08:38Doing that really reinforced her desire to be an actress, a performer.
00:08:45And then there was a good dry spell, six to nine months.
00:08:50And she was becoming discouraged because she wasn't getting anything.
00:08:54And then she auditioned for Good Morning, Miss Bliss.
00:09:00Lisa Turtle was the most stylish friend of the group.
00:09:05It was between Lark Voorhees and Tiffany Thiessen.
00:09:07In the room at the testing, I did bring up,
00:09:11Hey, we don't have anybody of color in this piece.
00:09:15And on the seventh call back, she got the part of Lisa Turtle.
00:09:21And then you're also meeting the other characters.
00:09:23I thought Heather Hopper was very funny.
00:09:26She was cast as a girl named Nikki.
00:09:28And the last role to round up the ensemble is a character named Samuel Screech Powers.
00:09:33He was dorky, he was goofy, and just kind of more the comedic relief.
00:09:41We ultimately ended up doing an open call, and that's where we found Dustin Diamond.
00:09:46And I remember his father being there.
00:09:48I remember his voice was kind of screechy, you know?
00:09:52Can anyone tell me where the Lost Colony is located?
00:09:57No one knows Miss Bliss.
00:09:58That's why it's Lost.
00:10:01Dustin starts on Miss Bliss at age 11,
00:10:04and begins playing a character who's three years older than he actually is.
00:10:08And he is the only one that's not playing his actual age.
00:10:11It's tough for a child actor.
00:10:13I mean, it's tough for an adult.
00:10:15It takes a lot of energy and a lot of work.
00:10:17Being on set as a child actor in a typical week, Monday through Friday,
00:10:21I think we'd had to be there at 8 a.m.
00:10:23Monday was the table read.
00:10:24You would sit down and go over the script.
00:10:27Tuesday and Wednesday were rehearsals.
00:10:30Thursday was the dress rehearsal, and then Friday we would film.
00:10:33And every day in between doing all of that, there was a mandatory three hours of school.
00:10:39So it was demanding, and it was a job as a child, which I think makes children grow up differently.
00:10:49On weekends, I was exhausted and recovering and ready to go back on Monday.
00:10:54To me, it feels no different than when you're training a puppy.
00:10:58The puppy doesn't really know what it's doing.
00:11:03In the beginning, I think it's fun for the kid.
00:11:07But I think after a while, it's not just chasing the ball for fun and getting a little treat afterwards.
00:11:13It's like, oh, and we're going to do it again?
00:11:15It's like, how many times can I do this?
00:11:18Peter Engels tried to keep the set wholesome, made sure the parents were around, and made sure language was appropriate
00:11:24for this age group.
00:11:26But child stars are pushed into an adult environment prematurely and missing the normal developmental milestones of childhood.
00:11:35I was away from my friends.
00:11:37You're not interacting with different people.
00:11:39You're not going outside to do PE.
00:11:42If you're coming back to regular school from being a child actor, nobody's going to know who you are.
00:11:47It's like, you've been absent.
00:11:48Like, you're an outcast.
00:11:49You're a new person.
00:11:55Lark took it in stride, and she knew that this was what she wanted to do.
00:12:02But we didn't know how the show was going to do.
00:12:04There was no way to know.
00:12:07Because most Saturday morning shows were cartoons, and they were trying to introduce something different.
00:12:13We have here a classroom based on mutual respect.
00:12:17There are three things I ask of you.
00:12:19The Miss Bliss character was overly saccharine, and that doesn't make for an interesting TV character.
00:12:27So we filmed 13 episodes, which was one season back then.
00:12:30Ultimately, I got the call.
00:12:32That wasn't picked up for a second season on the Disney Channel.
00:12:35And, you know, that was the end of Good Morning, Miss Bliss.
00:12:41We didn't get a lot of information from Disney.
00:12:45Basically, what we were told was Disney didn't want to continue the show.
00:12:49And what they did was they sold the rights to a few of the characters to NBC, and NBC was
00:12:55going to package it as a new show.
00:12:56It was a welcome surprise that it was picked up, but you feel vulnerable.
00:13:03They can decide to not pick you up the next season.
00:13:06So only three of the students from Good Morning, Miss Bliss make it over to NBC.
00:13:13Mark-Paul Gosler, Dustin Diamond, and it's Lark Voorhees.
00:13:19It was devastating, I would say.
00:13:21It was tough to process as a child because, you know, you feel the rejection of not continuing after, you
00:13:28know, a year of doing this.
00:13:29And I think my response was to take a break and go be a regular kid.
00:13:36And lo and behold, I never looked back.
00:13:40But for some of these actors, there were some strange outcomes for some of them, including stalking and criminality.
00:13:55911, what's your emergency?
00:14:02We'll do zoom-ins on him, too.
00:14:04I'm Robin Lippin.
00:14:06I'm the casting director of Saved by the Bell.
00:14:09Producers decided to shift the focus away from this teacher, Miss Bliss, and cast three new teen actors to go
00:14:18alongside Zach, Screech, and Lisa,
00:14:20who will now be in high school at a completely different school.
00:14:24I was casting A.C. Slater, who was the jock and the kind of the Fonzie, John Travolta type.
00:14:31It was hell on wheels.
00:14:32To find someone with that personality and the look and the comedy, it was really hard.
00:14:38Until Peter said, let's open it up and he could be any ethnicity.
00:14:43Then all I remember is Mario Lopez walking in.
00:14:46See, you have to understand, we both like this one girl, right?
00:14:50And we're both kind of little, we're leaders.
00:14:52And I remember calling Peter and saying, I found him.
00:14:56They weren't necessarily looking for like a Latin guy to play the role, which I thought was really cool, which
00:15:01I thought is the way it should be.
00:15:02Should be people that look like you and me be able to play roles.
00:15:06I was casting Jessie Spano, who was the feminist.
00:15:10Elizabeth Berkley had confidence, but there was also a vulnerability about her.
00:15:14I don't believe a woman should be displayed like a side of beef.
00:15:19However, I am wearing a swimsuit underneath.
00:15:21And for those of you who enjoy that sort of thing, it's blue with pink stripes, okay?
00:15:27And then I was casting Kelly Kapowski, the cheerleader.
00:15:31Tiffany just had that look.
00:15:33B-A-Y-S-I-D-E, go this side!
00:15:36Woo!
00:15:37In addition to six young actors, there were only a couple of adults as series regulars.
00:15:42A guy named Max, who's a very great magician named Ed Alonzo.
00:15:46He's always entertaining us.
00:15:47Right.
00:15:48I played Max, the owner of the diner, where the kids hung out.
00:15:51We're just sort of there to keep the scene moving.
00:15:55When we had the episode with buddy bands and they said, make the buddy bands appear.
00:16:00And I made them appear.
00:16:01And I gave one to each kid.
00:16:04And that kind of stuff sort of brought like, you know, like I'm here to always help you guys out.
00:16:09But the attention really needs to stay on the core of the six kids.
00:16:14That's the show.
00:16:19When we watched the pilot episode, I thought, oh, what a refreshing show this is.
00:16:26The show started to dominate Saturday morning kids programming.
00:16:30Saved by the Bell garnered more ratings than the Bugs Bunny and Tweety show, the Smurfs and Alvin and the
00:16:36Chipmunks.
00:16:37I don't think any of us imagined what it would have become.
00:16:40During the original run of Saved by the Bell, it attracted more teenage viewers than the Cosby show.
00:16:44At that time, they hadn't seen a black young actress perform that way.
00:16:49Want to know who boosted my confidence as a little black girl growing up in the 90s?
00:16:53Lisa f***ing Turtle.
00:16:56Lark was a fan favorite and a breakout character.
00:16:58Lisa Turtle was hashtag soft life before hashtag soft life was a theme.
00:17:03Not only was she the fashionable one, but both of her parents were doctors.
00:17:08That is a flex.
00:17:09We started to see a real fan base of kids.
00:17:14People were showing up to NBC to try and get a glimpse of Mark Paul or Mario.
00:17:22We started touring and doing like mall tours.
00:17:24When I saw that crowd of people that I was like, oh, wow, there's a lot of people that watch
00:17:33the show.
00:17:34It was just, it was very strange to me where I was coming from junior high where kids, you know,
00:17:42were horrible and mean and like would pick on you or say horrible things.
00:17:45And then you've got a group of, you know, 5,000 kids who are all wanting your autograph.
00:17:51There were giant bags of actual fan mail coming in.
00:17:56But I know that Dustin seemed to be getting the most letters from fans.
00:18:02Some members of our audience showed up today with something special. Where are you?
00:18:06On this talk show, there are a few teenagers in the audience.
00:18:11Over here, would you stand up and show Dustin what you did?
00:18:14Wearing t-shirts with the letters Screech on him.
00:18:20Do you consider yourself sort of a teen heart frown?
00:18:24Well, not usually.
00:18:27Of all the guys.
00:18:29And we can't forget there was a massive Screech fan base out there.
00:18:34And he seems taken back by this.
00:18:38After season two, syndication really made the show blow up.
00:18:44That is when you're able to be sold to other stations across the country so it can be played in
00:18:51the local Channel 5 markets or the local Channel 9s or 11s and 13s.
00:18:57Then Saved by the Bell was basically playing five times a day, seven days a week in different time zones.
00:19:05Not just one episode every Saturday morning.
00:19:08And then it started going into all these other countries, which is why I ended up traveling through all these
00:19:12other countries, because of the show.
00:19:19What can be great about being a young actor, a successful young actor, is fame and fortune.
00:19:28I think that the public doesn't realize how really unglamorous this industry is.
00:19:41Mario Lopez said he started out making about $1,500 an episode.
00:19:46That's a lot of money to a kid.
00:19:49But after a second season, in 1991, Saved by the Bell was pulling in roughly about $15 million in advertising.
00:19:59If it's a union show, and they were really paying them low, somebody was cashing in on it.
00:20:07Generally speaking, the executive producers, the higher-ups, make a lot of money.
00:20:12As a 12-year-old, you probably don't have any credits behind you.
00:20:16Chances are this is going to be your first big job.
00:20:19I've seen deals that are, this is what we're offering, take it or leave it.
00:20:23And if you leave it, we'll have somebody else.
00:20:26Look, when you're offered your first job, you don't say no.
00:20:28You have to start somewhere.
00:20:30You feel fragile, and you feel vulnerable.
00:20:34So you don't feel strong in a position of negotiation.
00:20:39Because they're in charge, and they can make a decision that can change your child's life.
00:20:45And you don't want to be responsible for doing something or saying something that jeopardizes that.
00:20:55These actors just didn't get good deals, and even worse, Dustin Diamond alleges his parents misused his money.
00:21:03My dad is not good with money. He bought all this stuff with my money.
00:21:09So in the 1990s, the law requires that 15% of a child's earnings needs to go into a blocked
00:21:18trust account.
00:21:19Legally, the parent cannot touch that money.
00:21:23However, a child can't legally manage their own money.
00:21:27Which means that a parent or guardian has to manage the other 85% responsibly and in the best interest
00:21:36of the child, not theirs.
00:21:39Is that enforceable?
00:21:44I met Dustin in like 2017, 2018.
00:21:48I came into his life much later.
00:21:52Dustin started telling me more about how much he made or how much he didn't really make.
00:21:55He made about $1,250 per week working on NBC on Saved by the Bell.
00:22:01Dustin had alleged that, you know, his parents are stealing his money or taking his money.
00:22:05You know, my parents wasted so much of my hard work.
00:22:08If the child is now approaching adulthood with nothing, nothing to show for hard work and long hours.
00:22:15If I just found out, after 10 years of working, that I had nothing in the bank anymore?
00:22:27That's tough.
00:22:31My name is Mark Diamond and Dustin Diamond is my son.
00:22:36You might know Dustin Diamond as Screech from Saved by the Bell.
00:22:40But there were a lot of other aspects to Dustin.
00:22:49Well, one of the things that was a big part of our life that almost nobody knows about is that
00:22:55our family was dealing with hard things.
00:23:02Yeah, I had a lot of loss.
00:23:05I basically lost everything and everyone I ever cared about, you know, except for a couple of friends.
00:23:13Yeah, yeah, my sister was murdered when she was 16.
00:23:17Yeah, she disappeared on her way home from school and a hunter found her in a field three days later.
00:23:32They wrote it off as a suicide.
00:23:35But, I mean, my sister was right handed and she was shot in the left temple.
00:23:43Dustin and his dad had already had a bunch of loss and grief around his family.
00:23:48The death of someone close to you is always hard, but the impact of not having closure or really accepting
00:23:53how they died can impact not just Dustin's dad, but the whole family.
00:24:01Generational trauma is the idea that, you know, your parents or your grandparents experienced a trauma and it shaped the
00:24:09way that they then treat the next generation.
00:24:12So, for example, if your grandparents were alive during a war and they experienced like wartime trauma, you know, for
00:24:20their children, they may end up being very protective of them.
00:24:24And so that shapes the way they see the world, how they attach to each other and how they operate
00:24:29in the world.
00:24:31My first son was named Ryan.
00:24:34He was born on my sister's birthday, March the 4th.
00:24:39He had the same day of the week, same time, same minute.
00:24:43So, you know, people were telling me, well, your sister's been reincarnated.
00:24:49But he had Down syndrome.
00:24:51He had an enlarged heart.
00:24:53He had exterior connections.
00:24:56It's called ductus arteriosus.
00:24:58I still remember.
00:24:59And that's like a leak outside your heart.
00:25:04And most of these kids don't live past a year.
00:25:08When Dustin was born, he was two years younger than Ryan.
00:25:12We were really, really worried that he might have Down syndrome, that he might have similar problems.
00:25:19But he was born healthy.
00:25:22But the thing was, Ryan couldn't crawl.
00:25:27He couldn't stand.
00:25:28He learned to roll around.
00:25:30And Dustin used to entertain him and play with him.
00:25:35And I think that was the beginning of his creativity.
00:25:40But then Ryan got the measles.
00:25:43He got them in his lungs.
00:25:45And his lungs were already compromised.
00:25:48He died in 1983.
00:25:51At the age of eight.
00:25:58Dustin had been perky, outgoing kid.
00:26:02He was getting good grades.
00:26:04Suddenly, he was morbid and failing in school.
00:26:12I feel like I bonded with Dustin in grade school before Saved by the Bell.
00:26:18In fifth grade, our teacher said we were going to be getting a new student.
00:26:23Dustin, I immediately liked him.
00:26:26You know, he liked to be a little goofy.
00:26:29We constantly were creating a ruckus.
00:26:32And we were just great friends and enjoyed our company together.
00:26:38Dustin didn't talk about his brother that much.
00:26:43Dustin just didn't really want to talk about the pain from losing a brother.
00:26:49I know that Dustin definitely wanted to be an actor.
00:26:53Dustin got involved with going on auditions.
00:26:57We did two episodes of The Wonder Years with Fred Savage.
00:27:03This is The Wonder Years, The Glee Club.
00:27:05He really enjoyed this.
00:27:07Not because it was a primetime thing.
00:27:10He just liked the opportunity to work with all these other kids.
00:27:13That'd be great, Miss Hancock.
00:27:14We'd love to sing in the spring scene.
00:27:17So Dustin looked to acting as a way to solve his grief.
00:27:23And now here he is in a community, in a family, where everyone else feels a part of something.
00:27:29I was the one taking Dustin, going on auditions, and quite frankly, I thought he'll get tired of it.
00:27:38But he gets cast in Saved by the Bell.
00:27:42And by law, you can't have a minor on the set completely unsupervised.
00:27:51It was a legal requirement that either a parent or a guardian was there.
00:27:55So a guardian you would have to pay.
00:27:57I think all of the parents that were on Saved by the Bell, we were all determined to be there.
00:28:02Mark Paul's mother was always there.
00:28:05If I wasn't there because I was working sometimes, my mother was there.
00:28:12Dustin's mother was working for what had been the phone company.
00:28:16But when Ryan had his medical bills, we were forced into bankruptcy.
00:28:22We just don't have the income we used to have.
00:28:24And we got to a point where we had to make a decision.
00:28:27I gave up my job so I could leave and go to the set.
00:28:34Any regrets?
00:28:38Just with my life, working for Columbia Pictures, I was offered a position to something better.
00:28:47I didn't accept it because Saved by the Bell was just getting popular.
00:28:54And my whole point was to forward my daughter's career.
00:28:59So I said no to the position that I wish I had said yes to.
00:29:06And hired somebody else to be on the set.
00:29:11His daddy gave that up to go make sure that Dustin became successful.
00:29:16He tells the press that my parents took my money.
00:29:20Yeah, yeah.
00:29:21How did it feel that he was blaming you?
00:29:25Well, it really made me upset.
00:29:28And I told him, why are you throwing me under the bus when I can't pop myself on television and
00:29:35go, uh, no.
00:29:37Dustin's agent would take out her 10% commission.
00:29:41Anything left over, we had to cover certain things like taxes.
00:29:46Gasoline, obviously.
00:29:47Headshots.
00:29:48Every fan letter wanted the same thing.
00:29:51Can you send us an 8x10 picture?
00:29:54Autograph.
00:29:54Thousands of letters.
00:29:56But see, we had to pay for that.
00:29:58This didn't leave much money for us to do anything.
00:30:01In fact, nothing.
00:30:03So it wasn't like he was taking money from Dustin.
00:30:10The parents do have to give up their careers and they don't get paid.
00:30:14So the parent may think, well, if I become their manager, I can take 10% of whatever they make.
00:30:21As opposed to giving it to another manager.
00:30:23That was the case for Mark Paul's mom.
00:30:26Look, it's tough.
00:30:28I do feel bad for parents.
00:30:30But the money, I think it really messes up that sacred relationship with a child and parent.
00:30:36The public tends to think success, particularly fame, will solve all the problems.
00:30:45Not only does that typically not solve problems, it makes them worse.
00:30:49We had no idea that Saved by the Bell would be such a success.
00:30:54And you can have some fans that are very dark themselves and obsessed.
00:31:03And Lark had one in particular that was very dark.
00:31:07He sent many letters.
00:31:10He was very demanding.
00:31:13It was during the time when Rebecca Schaefer, she was killed by a psycho fan.
00:31:20And Lark had a psycho fan.
00:31:22Just by the things that he would write.
00:31:26He was going to be her husband and nobody else would be.
00:31:30And he would kill anybody who tried to get in the way of that.
00:31:41It was a period of time when I wouldn't allow Lark to answer the door.
00:31:50I was afraid one day he would show up at the door.
00:31:55He sent many letters.
00:31:58A lot of them, I didn't show them to her.
00:32:01Because I didn't want her to have that kind of fear.
00:32:04But I did tell her that there was a fan that was crazy.
00:32:09And we want to be on the lookout for that.
00:32:13As long as she was on the set, at the studio, it would be harder for him to get to
00:32:21her.
00:32:22Because he's got to go through these layers of security.
00:32:29Dustin had a stalker, too.
00:32:31And we were actually afraid for his life.
00:32:37The guy called on the phone.
00:32:39This guy said, you're Dustin's father.
00:32:42And I said, yes.
00:32:43Who is this?
00:32:44And he said, I want Dustin.
00:32:46You will bring me Dustin.
00:32:49Or you're going to die.
00:32:50We never had any kind of contact or anyone following us around anywhere, anything like that.
00:32:57And then we ended up in a house, which was in another city.
00:33:02I'm sure this was, I mean, unsettling is not a strong enough word for a young adolescent to be dealing
00:33:10with something like that.
00:33:13The young performers really have no sense of what fame is going to be like for them.
00:33:23In 1993, a woman accused Mario Lopez, he was 19 at the time, of raping her at her home in
00:33:31Chula Vista.
00:33:31She was 18.
00:33:33Shortly after those allegations surfaced, a second woman comes forward and claims that Mario Lopez raped her in 1991.
00:33:40Reporters were calling me asking me, is this possible?
00:33:46Listen, just because somebody has a squeaky clean character and history doesn't mean these things shouldn't be taken seriously.
00:33:53They should be, they should be investigated carefully.
00:33:55Also of note, during these rape allegations, Mario Lopez was completely cooperative with detectives and denied any wrongdoing.
00:34:04I believe Mario is suffering the unfortunate consequences of having a high profile in the community.
00:34:12The deputy district attorney announced that there was no evidence to support either allegation, the 1993 rape allegation or the
00:34:19subsequent 1991 allegation.
00:34:21Mario is not the first person who has some celebrity status to suffer this type of allegation.
00:34:31Even though there were these things that were going on behind the scenes, season four did very, very well.
00:34:39Well, this is Mario, Tiffany, Mark Paul and Lark.
00:34:46Sometimes after the show ended, she would get into a dark mood.
00:34:52And it's as if she had been fighting that whole day, whatever is going on in her head.
00:34:59And then after the show, she would just give into that space.
00:35:09She had anger moments, but they would be short-lived.
00:35:15And I didn't know why.
00:35:23Save by the Bell was on for four seasons, and then it ended, and it had been a long time
00:35:28coming.
00:35:28All the kids grew up, and Peter wanted age-appropriate kids.
00:35:34Save by the Bell did end.
00:35:36It ended on a high note.
00:35:39They were doing this graduation show, and that was going to be it.
00:35:44We had said goodbye after we graduated on Save by the Bell, and then I was going back to school.
00:35:49I wasn't really sure if I was going to become an actor or continue being an actor.
00:35:53And then Peter wanted to do a couple of TV movies.
00:35:57There was Las Vegas.
00:36:00There was Hawaii Style.
00:36:04Peter Engel definitely carved out his own niche on television in the 90s.
00:36:09After Save by the Bell ends, he created shows like California Dreams, USA High, Malibu, California.
00:36:16All shows about teenagers based in California.
00:36:20Yoo-hoo! Dr. Drew over here!
00:36:23Hi!
00:36:23I was actually a guest appearance on one of the Peter Engel shows, Hangtime.
00:36:29We all get jealous sometimes, and it's usually when we have a lack of self-confidence or feel inadequate or
00:36:34insecure.
00:36:35Talking to young people about relationships to probably bring that educational, informational element in.
00:36:42And then comes the spin-off, The College Years.
00:36:44This wasn't a kid's show anymore because it aired during primetime on NBC.
00:36:49Executives were smart enough to still cater to the audience that grew up with this cast with the same type
00:36:55of quirky and fun storylines the viewers came to know and love.
00:36:59The college years, that's the one that I was really proud of.
00:37:02It has all the elements of a primetime adult show.
00:37:07But just like when Good Morning Miss Bliss became Saved by the Bell, the entire cast was not invited back.
00:37:15The three guys, Mark, Mario, and Dustin, all go on to that show.
00:37:21Tiffany Amber Thiessen is also brought back, but not Lark and Elizabeth.
00:37:29They said, they don't want Lark.
00:37:33And I told him, I said, this is the first time that I no longer believe in the show.
00:37:42Because I'm almost ready to cry.
00:37:46But it hurt her.
00:37:48It was a stupid decision.
00:37:58They did exclude Lark.
00:38:00And I didn't know why.
00:38:02You don't know if you're negotiating where they can exclude you, exclude your child or that character.
00:38:09That's part of the business.
00:38:14A lot of people in the black community resented not having Lisa Turtle on there.
00:38:20That was their black identity on Saved by the Bell.
00:38:26And then it was suddenly gone.
00:38:29Lark Voorhees did go on to perform in soap operas and movies, too.
00:38:35She did How to Be a Player in 1997.
00:38:38And then she did How High in 2001.
00:38:43In 2008, she stars in a movie called The Next Hit.
00:38:46She's in her early 30s by this point.
00:38:512001, and the next thing that she does is 2008.
00:38:54That's seven years.
00:38:55That's a long time.
00:38:57What was going on during that time?
00:39:02A lot of conflicts with things that she was going through emotionally, mentally.
00:39:12She went through bouts of anger.
00:39:16Sometimes we'd be slamming the doors or yelling out of frustration.
00:39:22She would run out of the house.
00:39:25And I didn't know where she was.
00:39:28I thought maybe there were things in her childhood that I didn't know about.
00:39:34I was seeing something impacting my daughter that wasn't healthy.
00:39:40That wasn't good.
00:39:42The controversy surrounding Lark Voorhees from Saved by the Bell.
00:39:46Kevin Frazier was first to talk to Lark and her new husband.
00:39:50In this ET interview, she was described as odd and rambling by the press.
00:39:55How did your mom react?
00:39:56The support was there, you know, at specific necessary, exact.
00:40:06And, you know, it's all celebratory.
00:40:09So it's a very strong, powerful ongoing.
00:40:15And we carry that through.
00:40:17Her speech is just confusing.
00:40:19It's hard to follow.
00:40:21I have no worries myself, nor do I.
00:40:26I exude, exhibit, or possess within my living stratus.
00:40:34I had leadership positions in a psychiatric hospital for over 30 years.
00:40:37Saw tens of thousands of patients with a variety of serious mental illnesses.
00:40:42And there is something odd about this.
00:40:44And when there's an odd presentation, you have to worry that there's some sort of thought disorder.
00:40:49schizophrenia, mania, something in there that's just not where the thinking isn't lining up.
00:40:57Certainly drugs could also cause something very similar, for sure.
00:41:00But she didn't look intoxicated.
00:41:02Let's just set the record straight, once and for all, and clear this up.
00:41:05Are you bipolar? Have you ever been bipolar?
00:41:08No. I have always been mentally healthy, 100% stable.
00:41:13Even though that's what she's claiming, it's clear that there's something deeper going on here.
00:41:19You and I have to talk.
00:41:21I'm pregnant.
00:41:26Time out.
00:41:28More than 20 years since the show wrapped, the Saved by the Bell cast reunited,
00:41:33and Lark and Dustin were both excluded from this reunion on The Jimmy Fallon Show.
00:41:42Dustin did get invited, and that kind of hurt him a little bit.
00:41:45He goes, man, how do you not have Screech?
00:41:46How do you not have Screech? Like, come on.
00:41:49That's ridiculous.
00:41:50I don't know why they didn't contact Lark as well.
00:41:54I know she was hurt.
00:41:57Disappointed.
00:41:58There's just a lot of speculation around what was happening to Lark Voorhees.
00:42:03It was a mystery.
00:42:06First I was told she was bipolar.
00:42:08Then the recent diagnosis is that she's schizoaffective thought disorder.
00:42:18So here are signs and symptoms of schizoaffective.
00:42:21Hallucinations, delusions, disorganized speech.
00:42:24We saw that.
00:42:25But do not get schizoaffective disorder confused with schizophrenia.
00:42:29They are very different.
00:42:31Schizophrenia is a progressive, disabling, specific syndrome.
00:42:36Schizoaffective disorder is not progressive.
00:42:39It's not as disabling as schizophrenia.
00:42:41And same with the mood disorders.
00:42:42They can be relatively mild.
00:42:44But it doesn't have to be traumatizing.
00:42:47It makes me wonder how she's doing today.
00:42:50Can I speak it all around, Derek?
00:42:52Cool.
00:42:52So just a little quick powder and I'm back.
00:43:10So, what?
00:43:12Honestly.
00:43:14Tell me who you are.
00:43:19I am Lark Voorhees.
00:43:23You might recognize me from Kau Hai.
00:43:26That was a lot of fun.
00:43:28And Lisa Turtles, Saved by the Bell.
00:43:31And it was the best feeling in the world.
00:43:34The best.
00:43:36It is great to bring life to these characters.
00:43:39And when you know you've hit that character,
00:43:41there's nothing like that rush in the world.
00:43:43Because you can see the boom that it's going to bring to everybody else in the audience.
00:43:48One of the movies that I really loved doing was Saved by the Bell Hawaiian style.
00:43:53Got to splash each other, ride bicycles, get bit by mosquitoes.
00:43:57And naturally, we're in Hawaii, so we had a good time.
00:44:00My favorite episode on Saved by the Bell is called The Mall.
00:44:05And I loved it because we got to cut loose and we had all these sets.
00:44:08We had a theater and then we were hiding in a tent.
00:44:11There was all these different storylines going on at once and we do it.
00:44:15And we did that and went to school.
00:44:17Really?
00:44:17Yeah.
00:44:18I remember I was taking my final exam in chemistry.
00:44:22I had to stop doing that, go film my scene, come back and finish my final exam.
00:44:28And that's your job.
00:44:30That's your job.
00:44:31Full, full days, full days, full days.
00:44:36Schizoaffective is a complicated illness.
00:44:41This stuff comes on 18 to 22.
00:44:43So Lark was 19 years old when she finished Saved by the Bell.
00:44:47So it was just coming on then.
00:44:50There hardly would have been any noticeable signs during that time,
00:44:52but there are all kinds of stressors around child actors.
00:44:56The exposure to fame, the stress of being in adult roles at a young age.
00:45:00The child also feels a chronic stress to always be performing.
00:45:05This all contributes to developmental problems.
00:45:08It can, to some extent, the stress can be good.
00:45:12But if it's chronic stress over a long period of time,
00:45:15now you're throwing not one day of stress or two days of stress,
00:45:19but an entire year or more of a stress that they have to live under.
00:45:24That can make them more vulnerable in their later years to other psychiatric conditions.
00:45:29These stressors, these experiences, does not explain a causation of schizoaffective disorder.
00:45:36It's contributing to how it's manifesting,
00:45:38but the schizoaffective has to have some genetic component also.
00:45:50Was a relative that also had similar signs?
00:45:54Her father had indicators of things.
00:46:00When we were married, his anger scared me.
00:46:03When there was one slap, I left. I was gone.
00:46:08When she got older, around 12, 13, she spent time with him, and she talked about his anger fits.
00:46:19He passed away somewhere around 2016.
00:46:22I came to some paperwork on his death, and there was a medication which indicated there was some sort of
00:46:34personality disorder.
00:46:37And that's why he and I could not get along in our marriage years ago.
00:46:45And Lark's aware of this too, correct?
00:46:50I don't think so. No.
00:46:53I didn't tell her that.
00:46:57So she'll learn now.
00:47:14I'm the owner of Charlie's Comic Con, and we're looking to have luck come out here.
00:47:20I love it.
00:47:22I love it. Can't get enough.
00:47:24And I'll always be entertaining.
00:47:27We have movies coming up and this and that, and I look forward to working.
00:47:32In 2021, NBC's streaming platform, Peacock, released a reboot of Saved by the Bell.
00:47:41It was great. She's bright. She's cheerful. She's well put together. She looks great.
00:47:46I hadn't seen them in years, and we got to share our talent again and find that Saved by the
00:47:50Bell method that makes you go.
00:47:53When I wake up in the morning and the dog goes out of warning, I don't think I'm gonna make
00:47:57it on time.
00:47:59Yeah. All that.
00:48:01Give myself a look.
00:48:03See the bus drive by.
00:48:05You got it.
00:48:06Yeah. I love Saved by the Bell.
00:48:08Yeah, so do I.
00:48:12She can live with this condition if she learns to manage it, learns its symptomatologies, and start dealing with this
00:48:19both symptomatically with medication and cognitive behavioral therapy, both very, very helpful.
00:48:24For any young women or young gentlemen, if they're in this business, really in life, period, don't give up.
00:48:32There's so many actors out there now, and so the really strong ones are gonna pull through, and that's what
00:48:38they're gonna be looking for, so don't give up.
00:48:40I've been watching this guy on television since I was a baby.
00:48:45He was like this buff dude with the mullet and the tank top.
00:48:49Whenever you're part of a really big show, you become pigeonholed into that role that you made famous.
00:48:57With Saved by the Bell, though, that actually wasn't the case.
00:49:01Hi. How are you? I'm good. How are you?
00:49:03Tiffany Amber Thiessen became this teen TV show darling. She appeared on shows like 90210.
00:49:10I'm having a real problem working with you.
00:49:12I saw her in a Woody Allen film, and she was excellent.
00:49:16Let's even look at Mario Lopez. Saved by the Bell wraps up. He starts radio announcing. He hosts Extra for
00:49:22a while.
00:49:22I'm even creeping in your hotel rooms while on vacation.
00:49:25I even went out dancing with the stars because my mom wanted me to do it.
00:49:28On Saved by the Bell, they dressed him in a unitard.
00:49:31I said, Mario, you're the strongest person I know.
00:49:34Because he can get on stage and pirouette. He does do it. And stay true to his point.
00:49:39Mark Paul became quite successful in adult programming.
00:49:43NYPD Blue, he was a regular cast member.
00:49:45That was a big leap.
00:49:47Many of them did go on to have some success after Saved by the Bell.
00:49:50Except for Dustin Diamond.
00:49:54Screech is in a world of his own on Saved by the Bell.
00:49:58Because you could argue that the other characters were conventionally attractive.
00:50:03Whether it was being an athlete, a cheerleader, or having a keen sense of fashion.
00:50:11Screech didn't necessarily have any of those qualities.
00:50:15He was dorky, he was goofy, and he was obsessed with Lisa Turtle.
00:50:22Hey, Lisa. My horoscope says we're destined to dance together.
00:50:26And she did everything she possibly could to get away from him.
00:50:30My horoscope says beware of dorks.
00:50:33Well, Lisa, Screech is easier to get rid of.
00:50:35Goodbye, Miss October.
00:50:38But Screech was adorable, okay?
00:50:41Even if it wasn't their favorite character, he's just so memorable.
00:50:46Dustin is the only child actor who is in all the seasons of the show, began with Miss Bliss, and
00:50:52all of the iterations.
00:50:53He does Saved by the Bell, the college years, where the kids grow up, go to college, was 1993 to
00:50:591994.
00:51:00And then during the college years, they also launched a new spinoff, Saved by the Bell, the new class.
00:51:06It didn't have any of the original cast, except for the principal and Screech.
00:51:10He's literally in every single branded aspect of Saved by the Bell.
00:51:17For me, as a manager, I didn't want my client to get pigeonholed into one character they were going to
00:51:24play, and then maybe never work again.
00:51:26I mean, what do you do?
00:51:28You walk away from what has been a successful show, and already has an established audience, even though it's a
00:51:36different version of it.
00:51:38There's a good chance you're going to have a chance of succeeding.
00:51:42In 1994, he's 17, and with the new cast, it gets a little uncomfortable.
00:51:51I was there when Screech, Dustin Diamond, returned into that fold.
00:51:58I'm going to be, well, to be totally honest, it was pretty bananas from the jump.
00:52:06So you'd walk in the dressing room, and it was immediately a little odd.
00:52:11He had pictures of, like, knives and guns in his dressing room.
00:52:18I will tell you that Dustin did like to carry a pocket knife.
00:52:23We were friends from before he was on the national stage, and he liked the Chinese stars, the samurai swords,
00:52:32the knives.
00:52:33He came off the big hit, Saved by the Bell, but he's still an insecure teenager at that time, who
00:52:41comes in wanting to present, like, I'm the big boss, I've got the gravitas, I'm really the star of this
00:52:47show.
00:52:51I saw him treat a lot of people poorly, to be very clear.
00:52:56We were shooting something. One day, as I recall, it was a promotional video.
00:53:01I was one of the PAs involved, and they told him, be natural, have fun, joke around, and we'll just
00:53:06capture it.
00:53:07And soon enough, there was an argument between Dustin Diamond and a cast member.
00:53:13I can't even remember what started it exactly, but here's Dustin Diamond saying, I could have you fired.
00:53:20Very quickly, it led to Dustin pulling out a butterfly knife.
00:53:29It's a very physically threatening thing.
00:53:31Everybody's trying to say, back off, everybody cool down.
00:53:35Finally, it ends up with Dustin, he didn't attempt to strike him with the knife, but it ends up with
00:53:40him in tears and he runs off.
00:53:43I have trouble making sense of Dustin's behavior some of the time. That's not good. That's violent.
00:53:48I guess my best read on that situation was that he's pulling out all the stops to display his power,
00:53:56but reached this emotional crescendo with these threats.
00:54:00And then the reality, I think, comes in of like, you're not going to stab him. You're not going to
00:54:04be able to get him fired.
00:54:07I think running off and crying was the only route available.
00:54:12They told me that there was something that happened on the set and Dustin threatened somebody.
00:54:19And I went to a taping, I think, the next week and we sat down and talked to him.
00:54:25A lot of people don't realize that he was dealing with hard things.
00:54:30He already lost his brother.
00:54:33Now, Dustin's mother, she had been diagnosed with cancer.
00:54:38And she went downhill pretty quickly.
00:54:42And, you know, Dustin saw that happening.
00:54:46In 1996, during the course of the run of Saved by the Bell, the new class, his mother passed away.
00:54:54Ultimately, it is just Dustin and his dad.
00:54:59The new class lasted seven seasons.
00:55:02That's actually longer than the original Saved by the Bell.
00:55:06And Dustin performs as Screech from age 11 to the age of 22.
00:55:13He misses out going to proms to the football games on the weekend.
00:55:18And so he was never able to sort of branch out and make friends in the real world with kids.
00:55:25And in the end, this was the demise of his career.
00:55:33In 2001, he declares bankruptcy.
00:55:35He lost his house and lost everything by not paying the mortgage payments.
00:55:39One of the things we see with child actors is they may not get the usual skills that are necessary
00:55:44to be an adult.
00:55:45And certainly if somebody didn't pay attention to his financial education, he may not at all understand how to handle
00:55:51money.
00:55:54He moved to a small town in Wisconsin and starts complaining that he needs money.
00:55:58You would think if someone who went on and did all these shows, he wouldn't have any issues for life.
00:56:06I think where the money was really to be made were in the residuals on the syndication.
00:56:11Residual payments are payments you get every time the show is aired.
00:56:21So I got some of the, I believe these are residual checks from Dustin.
00:56:26Like here's one for 12 hours and 74 cents.
00:56:29It says like right here, literally reused on TV.
00:56:33So this was from 2002.
00:56:35So the series is already over.
00:56:38Yeah, it's 12 hours and 74 cents.
00:56:44So after Saved by the Bell, Dustin finds small roles.
00:56:49In 2001, he is in Made with Vince Vaughn.
00:56:51Did you just let Screech in the f***ing club?
00:56:53In 2003, he's in Dickie Roberts' former child star.
00:56:57Wait, seriously, you guys had limos?
00:56:59There's a song called I Do from 98 Degrees.
00:57:03And there's this record scratch moment.
00:57:07Oh, man, I was just with that girl in my living room rug.
00:57:10That's my girlfriend.
00:57:11Every time he plays himself.
00:57:15I met Dustin through our manager at the time, right after the new class.
00:57:19As much as he would say, ah, I'm tired of being, you know, the Screech, he loved it.
00:57:24He loved when people recognized him for being Screech.
00:57:29But at no point in Dustin's career does he gain a reputation for being a skilled thespian.
00:57:36His career is about being Screech.
00:57:43For many years, Dustin actually went into comedy.
00:57:47At one point, he was touring 300 plus days of the year.
00:57:58What happens a lot of times with child stars is that for so many years of their life,
00:58:03they've been defined by this character, by the expectations of producers, by audiences.
00:58:08Who came out to get drunk and make fun of Screech?
00:58:11Part of their entire self-identity is tied to being approved of
00:58:16and in hearing the claps and the rewards that they get from people paying attention to them.
00:58:21My career is sailing, isn't it?
00:58:23Most people in my line of work start out stand-up comedy, hope to get a movie.
00:58:26Hope to get a TV series someday.
00:58:30I'm doing it backwards.
00:58:32In a later in life, if you're not still acting or getting that same amount of attention.
00:58:36You guys ready? You want to see some questions?
00:58:39I'll give you Robert De Niro as Jesus of Nazareth.
00:58:52That can also lead to, you know, a lot of substance abuse, risk-taking behaviors.
00:58:56We made it!
00:58:57Yeah!
00:58:58You're thrill-seeking, because you're still seeking that hit.
00:59:03In 2006, a sex tape emerged entitled, Screech Saved by the Smell.
00:59:09Yeah, it was disgusting.
00:59:11Oh, I don't want to, like...
00:59:16Oh, gentlemen, uh, we know that we get three points for every position. We'll tally those up later.
00:59:21At very minimum, him talking to the camera and advising his gentlemen viewers of what he has accomplished here suggests
00:59:31that this was not something leaked accidentally.
00:59:36It suggests that he intended to put this out.
00:59:38When that hit, it wasn't exactly Kim Kardashian big, but when you hear Screech has a sex tape, come on.
00:59:47Everyone's talking about it, you know?
00:59:48Even myself at work, my coworkers, my friends, were like, ew. You know? Like, how could you be friends with
00:59:57someone who put something out like that?
01:00:00And that's what really bothered me about that sex tape.
01:00:05But I've seen the tape.
01:00:07Yes.
01:00:07And you are kind of a jerk in the tape.
01:00:11I was a close friend of Dustin Diamond. I work as a professional wrestler. He loved wrestling. And we have
01:00:19a common interest. We just like to entertain people.
01:00:23But 2006 is a turning point in his life. Now, with every Google search, every person that looks, there's an
01:00:30asterisk next to his name.
01:00:32So here's one more challenge that he's got to navigate. One more piece of criticism that he's got to deal
01:00:38with. And this is a big one.
01:00:41Can I be honest, too? I think ever since the sex tape came out, he started to hit rock bottom.
01:00:47If you agreed to combat, I'd fight you.
01:00:49I did not threaten you.
01:00:52Celebrity Fit Club, the new reality show. This is a Marine sergeant. And Dustin threatens him.
01:01:01You put yourself in a second spot.
01:01:02No, you got it. First time you said you'd kick his ass, you said you'd kick mine.
01:01:06And then this gentleman loses it.
01:01:09He did that, and he got paid extra to be the bad guy. And that's when he started seeing that
01:01:15people didn't like him anymore.
01:01:16He started thinking he was a jerk. And so you started going from the good guy, the funny, dorky kid,
01:01:23to now you're not what we thought you were.
01:01:26You know, there was always a fear of somebody wanting to attack Dustin. You'd always get a lot of hate
01:01:31calling him names.
01:01:33Some people would try to belittle him.
01:01:37There was a time we were walking to New York City, and I think someone threw something at us and
01:01:40stuff like that.
01:01:40And it's just, Screech sucks, or something like that.
01:01:44When he's 32 years old, in 2009, Dustin publishes a memoir about everything that he says went on behind the
01:01:52scenes of Saved by the Bell.
01:01:53And there it was, behind the Bell.
01:01:57He alleges in this book, favoritism, sexual misconducts, sexual acting out, drug use.
01:02:05And most of the performers that I have talked with report no such thing.
01:02:11I was upset when I read the book.
01:02:12I was thinking, how could you say any of this?
01:02:15And he was going, I didn't, I didn't.
01:02:17They hired a ghostwriter.
01:02:18And I said, well, how could you be so stupid as to, you know, hire somebody and not check what
01:02:24they're doing on a regular basis?
01:02:26But I know the answer to that.
01:02:28He didn't want to write a book.
01:02:29He didn't want to take the time to even check on it, apparently.
01:02:34I never read the book.
01:02:35And the only thing I know about the book was what he told me.
01:02:39I think he got about $50,000 for that.
01:02:41And so that may not have been worth it.
01:02:47Cast members, they hated it.
01:02:49They really felt betrayed.
01:02:51He was just going, doing, getting in trouble one after the other.
01:02:57My intuition said something.
01:02:59Something's not right with him.
01:03:01And something else is going to happen.
01:03:13It's December 25th, 2014.
01:03:16Dustin and his fiancee at the time are in Wisconsin in a bar.
01:03:20There was an argument, and he actually stabbed someone.
01:03:29Jesus.
01:03:31This is the knife.
01:03:34And this is the damage done.
01:03:42There are two sides to every story.
01:03:44When I met Dustin for the first time in jail, he explained to me what had happened.
01:03:50It was December 26th.
01:03:53He and his fiancee, Amanda, normally don't spend a lot of time socializing outside because they get strange reactions.
01:04:02But they decided to have a little Christmas cheer and go to the local establishment to have a drink.
01:04:11We went to the bar and sat down.
01:04:15People noticed that he was there, noticed that he was a star, and began trying to covertly take pictures of
01:04:23him.
01:04:26But Amanda, at some point, said, hey, guys, we're just here trying to have a drink. Can you leave us
01:04:32be?
01:04:34Well, it never was a problem until later.
01:04:38I started taking pictures and laughing and making it a game to bump into us and try and capture it
01:04:43on video or camera.
01:04:44And Dustin noticed this happening, and Amanda was actually going to the bar to get the check.
01:04:51And somebody did body check her for the video.
01:04:58And she turned around, and it became a pushing match.
01:05:02His fiancee screamed.
01:05:04Dustin looked at the commotion and saw two men were holding her back.
01:05:10And there was blood actually coming down from her nose.
01:05:13And at that time, he intervened.
01:05:16Dustin said that this guy, Casey Smet, makes contact with Diamond and attempts to push him away from the group.
01:05:25Dustin was very protective of Amanda.
01:05:31And he said he remembered he had this pocket knife.
01:05:34And that's when his knife caught the kid's shoulder.
01:05:40He had a small puncture wound about a centimeter long on his right, the right side of his chest.
01:05:55Here's a police photograph of the injury to Casey Smet.
01:06:00And this photo, I don't think that's all blood.
01:06:03Looks like he's been wiped with iodine, which makes a bulk of that color on him.
01:06:09Dustin was charged with second-degree reckless endangerment, which is a felony in Wisconsin.
01:06:15So he was facing up to 10 years in prison for that.
01:06:19But he was also charged with carrying a concealed weapon.
01:06:22At the time, the knife that he had was not legal for him to carry.
01:06:27Since that time, it's now legal to carry the same knife.
01:06:29But he was also charged with disorderly conduct.
01:06:35We don't know exactly what happened because this is a classic he said, she said situation.
01:06:43And when you look at the surveillance footage, it's really hard to tell who was the aggressor, who was defending
01:06:49themself.
01:06:51Dustin and Amanda told me that they don't go out very often.
01:06:55He said, Tom, let me give you an example.
01:06:57If I go out during the daytime and I'm at the store, I get one of two reactions.
01:07:02One is somebody, this person I've never met before, will run up to me, throw their arms around me and
01:07:08hug me.
01:07:08I love you, Dustin. I love you.
01:07:10What Dustin said, the other thing that happens is somebody will take their cell phone, hit record and say, what's
01:07:17it like to be a D-bag?
01:07:20As I got to know Dustin over the weeks and months where we were preparing for trial, I learned that
01:07:26Dustin was a young man when his brother died.
01:07:28He also was a young star.
01:07:31And essentially half of his childhood was spent working on this show.
01:07:37And being a star took away some of his normalcy growing up.
01:07:42Something Dustin Diamond dealt with constantly was being the punchline.
01:07:47Yeah, you've been called a lot of things.
01:07:49You idiot. Get lost, creep.
01:07:51You're a strange and weird person.
01:07:53A nerd is more like it.
01:07:55Get out of here.
01:07:57Back when bullying was cool.
01:07:59Screech, you've got a dummy, you dummy.
01:08:01That's the Beatles, you idiots.
01:08:02He's not our kid, you goof.
01:08:04Let's call me twink.
01:08:06So stupid.
01:08:07I'm just simp.
01:08:08I'm a twink.
01:08:09I'm a twink.
01:08:10There is no stable, you dork.
01:08:12I didn't do anything, you twink.
01:08:14Screech, you're an idiot.
01:08:15But we allowed this as entertainment.
01:08:18It's not a pretty picture.
01:08:20This dink is frying my brain.
01:08:22That's the royal doofus.
01:08:24After a while of repetition, you keep hearing this,
01:08:26you start to believe that you're those things.
01:08:28Stupid.
01:08:29Goofball.
01:08:30Idiot.
01:08:31I mean, I love Saved by the Bell, but I mean,
01:08:33it was always funny when we see it, you know?
01:08:36But listening to that over and over again...
01:08:43It makes me sad for him.
01:08:49Sorry.
01:08:52I just...
01:08:55Now I get it.
01:08:56I get why he was so 50-50 with the show, you know?
01:09:03And sometimes he got it in real life, too.
01:09:06You know what's funny is I was always nice to Screech in real life.
01:09:09I think I was the only one that was really nice to Screech.
01:09:16Not really.
01:09:16Not really.
01:09:18Not really.
01:09:20I can say I was not very nice.
01:09:22You were.
01:09:22I was not.
01:09:23The thing with Dustin, too, is that we were all three years older than him.
01:09:27So at that point in your life, that's a big gap.
01:09:31Yeah.
01:09:31Like three years now.
01:09:32Between 12 and 15.
01:09:32You know, if you're 30 or 35 or whatever, that's not a big gap.
01:09:35But when you're 15 and someone's 12, that's a huge thing.
01:09:39So he was always ostracized.
01:09:40He was always in the, you know, kind of trying to follow what we were doing.
01:09:44Yeah.
01:09:45And, you know, his teenagers are like, hey.
01:09:51Dustin was so separated from the other cast because of the age.
01:09:55And so he would always hang out with the background people.
01:09:58When Dustin was in school, you know, it was between the ages of like six and ten.
01:10:05Nobody has really developed into nerd, bully.
01:10:09So he didn't really experience being bullied so much until later because he was a nerdy kid in his television
01:10:21high school role.
01:10:23Like the real bullies of the world sort of made up for his lack of not being bullied in school.
01:10:41First verdict that has been signed by Mr. Nichols reads, we the jury find the defendant, Dustin Diamond, not guilty
01:10:58of second degree recklessness.
01:10:59Dustin was found not guilty of the serious felony charge, which left the other two charges.
01:11:04We the jury find the defendant, Dustin Diamond, guilty of carrying against him.
01:11:17A few days after being discharged, he gets picked up for parole violation because his urine drug screen shows oxycodone.
01:11:26He was sentenced to another 60 days in jail.
01:11:29That tells me that that is not a incidental interaction with opioids.
01:11:35Somebody who is on probation and goes back to opiates is an opiate addict by definition.
01:11:49I've been doing car insurance since 1999 in Rockville, Illinois.
01:11:53And I started working with Dustin through TV commercials for my company.
01:12:00Do you realize it's illegal to screech your tires?
01:12:03Yeah, but it's kind of my thing.
01:12:05He can't, you punk! Get covered!
01:12:07I am covered.
01:12:09Barely!
01:12:10That paid him more money than Saved by the Bell.
01:12:13It was a lot more than the $1,200 per week.
01:12:15You know where I can get cheap car insurance?
01:12:17Yeah, that's easy. Insurance King!
01:12:19And when we started doing these commercials with Dustin, that's when we started to really, really grow.
01:12:26And that's what started our friendship.
01:12:33I did a lot of things for Dustin that people probably don't know about.
01:12:38After his girlfriend Amanda had moved back to New York, I started to realize I needed more help.
01:12:44Like, I bought him a vehicle.
01:12:46I remember one time I made a deal with him to meet his dad.
01:12:50And that's because I had found out that it had been 15 plus years before the last time I'd seen
01:12:57him.
01:12:57He was always traveling all the time for comedy gigs or commercial shoots.
01:13:02They just didn't see each other.
01:13:03So we met with Mark.
01:13:07When Dustin finally went to see his father, they were able to hash out everything from the past and make
01:13:11amends.
01:13:12When Dustin came out to California, one of the things he wanted to visit was there's an old cemetery up
01:13:20in this area where they have some people that fought in the Civil War.
01:13:25And he wanted to see this one that we had shown him when he was a kid.
01:13:31He says, remember, man, as you passed by, as you are now, so once was I, as I am now,
01:13:38so you shall be prepared for death and follow me.
01:13:43So in 2018, things started to kind of spiral a little bit for him.
01:13:48We would go out to dinner and things, and he would eat himself under the table and then get violently
01:13:55ill.
01:13:57I asked him, you know, is it pain pills? What's going on? You know?
01:14:02And there's a point where he kind of shut down.
01:14:04He was afraid to go get help because he didn't want to be that child star that had that problem.
01:14:09You know, that, look, another one on a drug addiction or something like that, you know?
01:14:13When the child performers end their run, it can be very disorienting to them and hard to lose the dazzling
01:14:21fame and lifestyle that was so gratifying for them.
01:14:23And sometimes that's when you see people retreat into drugs.
01:14:29I brought him to the hospital for MRSA.
01:14:31MRSA, the staph infection, is basically like a bacterial skin, flesh-eating disease, basically.
01:14:38Dustin had a surgery, and he had it removed.
01:14:42There was a point after the surgery where the surgeon came up to talk to him.
01:14:46So he was in there for 30 minutes, 45 minutes, something like that. That was a long time.
01:14:51And I knew that the surgeon didn't have a 45-minute conversation about, you've got to pay us your bill.
01:14:56So we get back to his house. I had made some payments for him.
01:15:00And he says, give me a one-way plane ticket to Florida.
01:15:04People that were close to him, eventually they would break apart.
01:15:10It's just sometimes Dustin just kind of pushes away a little bit.
01:15:13And I'm going to put myself in that category. He pushed me away, too.
01:15:17He wasn't used to people caring about him.
01:15:23What people don't understand about being a celebrity is that they have problems just like you and I.
01:15:31The difference is, when you have a problem or I have a problem,
01:15:34our family knows, our coworkers know, our people around us.
01:15:38When they have a problem, the whole world knows.
01:15:43So they become reclusive.
01:15:47Especially when I think that he found out during that interview with the MRSA.
01:15:52I think he found out that he had something and he was afraid to deal with it.
01:15:57He was just too nervous to even go to the hospital or to a doctor to get checked
01:16:01because he thought that the next day he would be in the tabloids of like,
01:16:05oh, he must have some, something wrong.
01:16:08He was getting ready to film in August. Dustin said, I can't.
01:16:12I'm like, why? He goes, I just won't look right for television.
01:16:15I'm like, is it MRSA? He goes, no, this is way worse.
01:16:18I'm like, what is it? He goes, I don't know yet.
01:16:22I'm going to go get a biopsy and we're going to start figuring this out.
01:16:26So then he finally did get into the due biopsy and then he called me.
01:16:31He's like, yeah, come down here and help me with this stuff.
01:16:34Right?
01:16:34Did you know what it was by the time you got there?
01:16:36We knew it was cancer. Yeah, we knew.
01:16:40It was a really large tumor on his neck.
01:16:45He called me and he said, I'm dying.
01:16:49And I wanted to go back there and see him.
01:16:51He was afraid that he was going to go out like his mother did.
01:16:56So we had heard that he had maybe six months, maybe six weeks.
01:17:02We didn't think it was six days.
01:17:07We would take some fan letters to him and read some of these letters to him in the hospital.
01:17:12Some were really touching about how...
01:17:19I remember reading one of them from a fan that said he saved his life.
01:17:31Yeah, he said he was going to kill himself.
01:17:41So he was getting bullied in school.
01:17:55I get home and my boyfriend at the time, I walk in.
01:17:59He says, I got a new use for you.
01:18:00I said, what?
01:18:01He says, did you hear?
01:18:03I said, what are you talking about?
01:18:04Hear what?
01:18:05He said, Dustin Diamond passed.
01:18:14I'm sorry.
01:18:15And I said, what?
01:18:16He said, Dustin passed.
01:18:17I'm sorry.
01:18:34He didn't want to be buried.
01:18:36He actually did not want a grave marker at all because he didn't want to be messed with in the
01:18:40afterlife as he was when he was in life.
01:18:45What's the world missing not having Dustin in it?
01:19:03This is not exciting.
01:19:06I missed having the fun.
01:19:07I can remember to have fun.
01:19:14Excuse me a second.
01:19:15Yeah.
01:19:35He wasn't done doing the things he wanted to do.
01:19:40He's gone a year later.
01:19:43Do you miss Dustin?
01:19:45All the time.
01:19:47Yeah.
01:19:53All the time.
01:20:13It was really cool to go out there and be a part of the memorial episode.
01:20:17Yeah.
01:20:18The only one I didn't get to meet was Lark.
01:20:21From what I understand, she was just too emotional and she had to keep going back to makeup and she
01:20:25was crying during the shoot and she had a hard side with that.
01:20:28Yeah.
01:20:29Well, he died of cancer.
01:20:31Yeah.
01:20:31That hurt.
01:20:34Even with Dustin gone, we still carried it on in the name of Saved by the Bell, Peter Ingle, all
01:20:41of the writers and producers and Dustin.
01:20:45And we all got to celebrate him.
01:20:47To Screech.
01:20:48Oh.
01:20:49Screech.
01:20:50Screech.
01:20:50Screech.
01:20:51I'm glad we got that on footage.
01:20:54Because he matters.
01:20:56Yeah.
01:20:59I got some stuff that we found in Dustin's dad's house.
01:21:05This was one of his first headshots.
01:21:08This was one of his report cards from onset from the Valley Professional School.
01:21:13And he did get all A's.
01:21:16Right?
01:21:17So, that was pretty cool.
01:21:20I found an unopened fan letter.
01:21:23Do you want to open it?
01:21:24Okay.
01:21:291994.
01:21:30Dear Dustin, I watch all of your TV shows.
01:21:33I like them all.
01:21:35You're very, very, very funny.
01:21:37I know you're busy, but maybe could you send me your signed picture?
01:21:43I know you're famous, but please, I'm nine.
01:21:47I love Saved by the Bell.
01:21:48And my favorite animal is a pig.
01:21:51What's yours?
01:21:53Well, it was definitely a dog.
01:21:55He ain't a lot of dogs.
01:21:56Do you, in real life, like Lisa?
01:22:00From your fan, Danielle.
01:22:03Right?
01:22:06Kind of cool.
01:22:07So, I can tell you, Danielle, that he absolutely did like Lark.
01:22:13She was a really good person.
01:22:15And she left a voicemail for him.
01:22:17And we played it for him before he died.
01:22:19And he enjoyed it.
01:22:21She was the only one that really reached out to him.
01:22:24And, um, is really heartfelt.
01:22:27And I know they had a connection.
01:22:32That was my very good friend.
01:22:37I miss him.
01:22:45These celebrities...
01:22:45Matt, Matt, smile.
01:22:47...have to get the drugs from someplace.
01:22:50This part of the drowning.
01:22:51Responsible for Matthew Perry's death.
01:22:52The physician added to his demise.
01:22:55He was known as Doc Hollywood.
01:22:57I have the power of all the doctors.
01:22:58Somebody should be held accountable for killing somebody.
01:23:01...
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