A Complete History of the ‘Saved By the Bell’ Behind-the-Scenes Dating Drama

Navigating a social circle in high school is hard, even in the idyllic world of Bayside, California. It’s only natural that all those perfect-looking kids at Bayside High would want to get all up on each other, and boy, did they. There was, of course, Zack and Kelly, except when there wasn’t, and Slater and Jessie, except when there wasn’t, and sometimes, there was Kelly and Slater, or Zack and Tori. 

Remember Tori? It’s okay. Nobody does.

Well, those kids on Saved By the Bell were also kids in real life, so that’s largely what was going on behind the scenes, too. “All of us dated at one point or another — it was incestuous!” Mark-Paul Gosselaar told People in 2009, meaning that he, specifically, dated all three of the show’s lead actresses “at one point or another.” In fact, he dated Lark Voorhies for three years during the show’s run, and Tiffani-Amber Thiessen recalled a whirlwind trip to Paris where “we ate crepes, and my first sip of alcohol was with him. It felt at times like we were Barbie and Ken."

As a result of these revolving door flings, “Sometimes the girls would gang up on the guys,” Gosselaar said. “Tiffani and Elizabeth would hate me, and then they’d hate Lark because Lark was talking to me, and Mario was supposed to side with someone.” It’s pretty clear who Mario Lopez would have sided with — he also dated Tiffani-Amber Thiessen while filming the show. “She was a sweetheart who reminded me of Priscilla Presley, and I’ll admit to feeling as cool as Elvis when she was on my arm,” he wrote in his memoir, Just Between Us, but although, “I thought that being loyal to Tiffani was the right thing to do… I can’t say I was capable at that age of following through on my noble intentions.” 

Rumor has it he means that he was caught making out with an extra right before filming the episode “Student-Teacher Week.” You can’t say Jessie was wrong for calling him a pig.

You might notice one name that’s conspicuously absent, and there’s a few good reasons for that. According to producer Peter Engel, who often had to run interference between the horny teens, "Everybody dated everybody else except Screech," probably mostly because Dustin Diamond was three years younger than the rest of the cast, which is decades in teen time. That sense of isolation may have been what led to him being a pretty gross person who later wrote a memoir full of castmate slander (that he denied actually writing), but he also may have just been a gross teenager, too. 

Whatever the case, no one was fucking Screech. Because fuck Screech.