“Saved by the Bell” grad Mark-Paul Gosselaar may not remember much from his years at Bayside High, but we sure do. And there was no way we were going to chat with the star of Fox’s “The Passage” without trying to clear up a few things from back in the day.
For starters, we talked about Zack Morris’ (Gosselaar) SAT score, which single-handedly got him into Yale (he did not attend once NBC realized they could do a “College Years” spinoff and needed a fake school that all the returning characters could theoretically be accepted to).
“I don’t, but I remember they were really high…” Gosselaar told us.
TheWrap reminded the former teen heartthrob that Zack got an impossible-to-get 1502. (This was back when the tests were out of 1600 possible points, but never in two-point increments.)
“A 1502?!? Oh, wow… Oh no, people always ask me, ‘Do you remember this episode?’ And honestly I don’t remember a thing, because it was a point in my life where so much was changing, physically and mentally and to be a part of the show — I don’t even remember what I did last week!” Gosselaar said. “So it’s hard for me to remember what I did as a kid. So I’ll watch episodes and go, ‘Oh, my God!’ I’m shocked by some of the things we got away with.”
Like that time Zack inexplicably hung with A.C. Slater (Mario Lopez) in their hallway fist-fight? We asked about that too.
“Yeah, in real life Mario was I believe a state wrestling champion, so Mario was like, ‘I’ll take you down like this and I’ll pummel your face.’ And I was like, ‘OK, great. That sounds about right,’” Gosselaar said. “But, again… a lot of the things on the show like [Zack fighting to a draw with Slater] just didn’t make sense. And I can’t believe we did that. But it’s enjoyable to watch and I still enjoy it.”
Remember the fight via the video above. Who do you have on the cards? Let us know in the comments section.
Finally, for the record, here is what the rest of the gang got on their SATs:
- Screech: 1220
- Jessie: 1205
- Tori: 1150
- Lisa: 1140
- Kelly: 1100
- Slater: 1050
Gosselaar’s “The Passage” airs Mondays at 9/8c on Fox. Read more from our conversation with him here.
Jenny Maas contributed to this report.