Mario Lopez is weighing in after his Saved by the Bell costar Tiffani Thiessen‘s claims about their virtually nonexistent residual checks.
Thiessen, 52, recently alleged that her residuals for the NBC show, which ran from 1989 to 1993, had “dried up.”
“It’s like, negative now,” she told Page Six last month. “It costs more to print the check.”
Thiessen, who played Kelly, recalled how she “didn’t start making real money” until she joined Beverly Hills 90210 in 1994, adding, “We didn’t have to pull on that show. We made nothing and we just did our job. … When we went to primetime for one season, we got a little bit more.”
In response, Lopez, 52, took to X on Wednesday, September 30, to share Thiessen’s quotes. “Real talk,” he added.
Their former costar Mark-Paul Gosselaar, meanwhile, shared on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen in 2019 about the “really bad deals” he and his castmates made.
“Poor deals, back then. It is what it is. You move on, you learn,” he shared before clarifying he had a “great experience” as Zach.
The Saved by the Bell cast is not the only group to speak out. Dawson’s Creek, which aired from 1998 to 2003, resulted in claims about lackluster salaries — and residuals — from the show.
“There was no residual money,” the late James Van Der Beek told Today in 2012. “I was 20. It was a bad contract. I saw almost nothing from that.”
Van Der Beek recalled his view on which roles to accept shifting amid his Dawson’s Creek fame. (He died in February at the age of 48 following a battle with stage 3 colorectal cancer.)
“You are incredibly fortunate whatever success falls on you, which is what happened with me,” he noted. “But as soon as that happens, I think there is a tendency to feel like you have something to lose. Or something to protect. That can often lead to taking yourself a little too seriously.”
He continued: “It is very easy if you have all the money in the world to just sit back and coast. But if you realized that you are going to have to start providing for yourself and for your family, it really forces you to buckle down.”
Jackson, 48, for her part, had a different experience from Van Der Beek.
“I wouldn’t want to go back to my twenties again, that amount of angst. I would make more money doing four episodes of Dawson’s Creek than most of my friends’ parents made in a year,” he told The Times in 2023. “That was the center of my imposter syndrome: ‘You’re trying to set me up to be a role model to kids, and I definitely am not, and you’re paying me all this money that I don’t deserve.'”
