Mark-Paul Gosselaar calls ‘Saved by the Bell’ ‘not a great show’

Most actors have jobs on their resumes they’d love to disown, but it’s rare for one to criticize the biggest role of his career. But that’s exactly what “Franklin & Bash” star Mark-Paul Gosselaardid in an interview with Yahoo TV this week.

The 38-year-old actor, who got famous in the early ‘90s for playing Zack Morris on the teen sitcom “Saved by the Bell,” had some unkind words to say about the series that gave him a career.

“It’s not a great show,” he told the site. “The writing is kind of hokey ... it’s very much a piece of that time.”

Gosselaar is lucky to have graduated from child acting to more adult roles, with stints on “NYPD Blue” and several other short-lived (but adult) shows. Not all of his “Saved” classmates fared as well, such as Dustin “Screech” Diamond, whose career path led him to direct and star in his own sex tape, which he released in 2006.

Gosselaar’s resistance to embracing the show may have something to do with its omnipresence in his life, even today, nearly 20 years after it went off the air.

Leonard Nimoy went through a similar ambivalence with his role as Mr. Spock, publishing an autobiography in 1975 (before “Star Trek” went to the big screen) called “I Am Not Spock.” He later re-embraced the role with a second book in 1995 titled “I Am Spock.”

So give Gosselaar a few years (and maybe a “Saved by the Bell” big-screen revamp), and he may come around.

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