Mark-Paul Gosselaar opened up about why he isn’t looking for every project he does to have an onscreen romance.
While reflecting on his past roles with Us, Gosselaar, 52, recalled his short-lived 2016 series Pitch, which resulted in viewers rooting for his and Kylie Bunbury‘s characters to get together. “Whether there would be a connection between [Mike] and Ginny? That I don’t know,” he said. “I think they would always sort of keep that [under wraps].”
Gosselaar, who was promoting his partnership with AstraZeneca for their cancer biomarker testing campaign, admitted he wasn’t actively rooting for the story line.
“No, no, no. Then I gotta go home and explain that to my wife,” said Gosselaar, who has been married to Catriona McGinn since 2012. “It’s never a good thing. Anytime there’s any sort of moment of intimacy, I always have to forewarn my wife that this is coming up. She needs earmuffs, an eye mask and the whole thing anytime I have to be intimate with anybody on screen.”
The actor had a similar experience filming NBC’s Found, during which the audience started to hope his villainous character, Sir, would find love with Gabi (Shanola Hampton), whom he kidnapped when she was a teenager.
“It’s such an interesting social experiment that I don’t know what we intended to perform. I really enjoyed playing that character. It was written extremely well, and to play opposite Shanola Hampton was great. I thought we had a great chemistry,” he recalled. “That was a fun show, and it was just getting so good [when it was canceled]. I really felt like we were finding our legs in the second season and understanding these characters a little bit more. I would have loved to have gotten more seasons out of that.”
According to Gosselaar, the trajectory of his story shifted because of the offscreen interest in Sir and Gabi, saying, “I was told when I was talking about this character during the development stage that he needed to die in order for Gabi to finally grow and to let go of her past. If she could move on, he needed to be out of the picture. So I was told that I was only going to be there for two seasons anyway. Now, as we started filming and all you sickos started loving the fact that we were going to be a couple, they wanted to see us extend that.”
He concluded: “I don’t know how long that was going to extend. I don’t know where that was going to go, but I was along for the ride, and I just had the best time with that.”
Since NBC’s controversial decision to cancel Found last year, Gosselaar has remained booked and busy with a return on Will Trent, his upcoming series Bulges and now a partnership with AstraZeneca to launch Meet Your Mark, a new awareness campaign designed to make cancer biomarker testing feel more personal and approachable.
“Having loved ones diagnosed with cancer, it is something that affects almost everyone, and I wanted to lend my voice with AstraZeneca, with this new public health campaign called Meet Your Mark. Essentially, we’re just trying to get the word out there about biomarkers and how it is an option for people to talk with their doctors about to start a conversation,” he explained. “A lot of the times, when someone is diagnosed or they know a loved one that’s been diagnosed, they feel like their world is spinning. So we’re just giving them a second to understand that there are options to talk with your doctors, start a conversation, see if biomarker testing is right for them.”
Gosselaar hopes the campaign will show how biomarker testing may help guide more informed and personalized treatment decisions.
“Having information can sometimes just ease the process to understand that each cancer is different. We now have the ability through blood and tissue testing to understand each individual’s cancer a little bit better,” he continued. “And sometimes with your medical professional, they can through these clues and through biomarker testing can figure out a more personalized treatment plan. So it’s a start.”
He concluded: “A lot of the times it’s not only the person who has been diagnosed, but it’s the caregiver. It’s the person that might be in the room with you, while this is being discussed, that while they’re processing, that person and the other person in the room can ask these questions. We’re just trying to get the word out there that this exists, and that there’s options.”
