Key Takeaways
- Tiffani Thiessen said her Saved by the Bell residuals have effectively “dried out,” joking that it probably costs more to print the check.
- Mario Lopez backed his former co-star with a blunt “Real talk!” as Thiessen recalled low original pay and earning nothing from Kelly Kapowski merchandise.
- Mark-Paul Gosselaar and other stars of major shows have reported similarly tiny payouts, highlighting how syndication and streaming success often fails to reach performers.
Saved by the Bell has been living rent-free in millennials' heads for more than 30 years, but according to Tiffani Thiessen, it hasn't exactly been paying her rent. And co-star Mario Lopez needed only two words to weigh in.
“Real talk!” he wrote Wednesday on X, reposting a graphic featuring his former co-star's comments about the surprisingly small residuals she says she receives from the hit NBC sitcom.
Thiessen, who played Bayside High's Kelly Kapowski, made the revelation during a Sept. 24 appearance on SiriusXM's Page Six Radio. Asked whether she still receives residuals for Saved by the Bell, the 52-year-old said she thinks the money has “dried out.”
“It's like, negative now,” she joked. “It probably costs more to print the check.”
That's a striking reality for a series that became a fixture of ’90s youth culture. Saved by the Bell debuted on NBC in 1989, and by 1992, the Los Angeles Times described it as the top-rated Saturday-morning program among teens. NBC ultimately expanded it to two half-hour installments as the network built a larger block of live-action programming around teen viewers.
Thiessen said the cast's original pay wasn't nearly as glamorous as the show's success suggested. “We made nothing and we just did our job,” she recalled, adding that the actors earned “a little bit more” when the franchise went primetime. She said she didn't start making “real money” until joining Beverly Hills, 90210 in 1994.
Even Kelly Kapowski's staying power didn't translate into a windfall. Later in the interview, Thiessen remembered seeing her character's face on popular T-shirts and said she felt “angry” because she wasn't “seeing anything in return.”
Her former castmates have told similar stories. Mark-Paul Gosselaar admitted on Watch What Happens Live in 2019 that the cast "made really bad deals," then got even more specific on a 2022 episode of Inside of You. Some of his syndication checks had shrunk to just 10 or 13 cents, he revealed, and the cast never saw a dime from merchandise.
"I giggle about it because somebody had to print that on a check," Gosselaar joked.
The late Dustin Diamond wasn't exactly cashing in on reruns, either. Earlier this year, his friend Dan Block showed a $12.74 residual check from 2002 during an episode of Hollywood Demons: After the Bell.
And Saved by the Bell is hardly the only massive TV hit whose long afterlife hasn’t translated into equally massive residuals for everyone onscreen.
Full House ran for eight seasons on ABC and was popular enough to land a five-season Netflix revival. More than three decades after its debut, Jodie Sweetin revealed she'd recently received a residual check for just one cent.
The streaming era has produced some similarly jarring numbers. Netflix said 105 million households had watched at least one episode of Orange Is the New Black by 2019, yet cast member Kimiko Glenn once shared a foreign royalties statement totaling just $27.30.
Then there's Gilmore Girls, which continues to rack up serious viewing long after leaving network TV. The series logged 640 million streaming minutes in a single week in September 2024, but Lauren Graham said last year that “there really are no residuals on Netflix,” joking that she's been “paid in love.” Her co-star Sean Gunn made a similar point during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike, saying he sees “almost none of the revenue” generated by the show's streaming afterlife.
Thiessen, meanwhile, already has another series underway. Her supernatural teen drama Coven Academy premieres Oct. 1 on Freeform, with the full season arriving on Hulu and Disney+ the following day.
The renewed conversation around Saved by the Bell comes just days after the death of Dennis Haskins, who played Bayside’s beloved Principal Belding, at 75.
