SAVED BY THE BELL Star Wants to Protect His Children from the Entertainment Industry
By Movieguide® Staff
SAVED BY THE BELL’s Mark-Paul Gosselaar says he wants to protect his children from the entertainment business he experienced as a young star.
“The director was saying, ‘The minute you walk through these double doors leading onto the stage, you’re no longer a child anymore, you’re an adult. You have to act like an adult,'” Gosselaar recalled. “That’s one of the reasons I don’t want my children in it is because I don’t feel it’s a place for children.”
Gosselaar fathers sons Dekker, 7, and Michael, 17, and daughters Lachlyn, 6, and Ava, 14.
Gosselaar, who is best known for his role as Zack Morris on the 1989 comedy series, also said that child stars deal with rejection.
“The rejection that you deal with as a kid, I thought it was pretty blunt growing up, like, the reasons for why you didn’t get [the role]. They’re like, ‘Eh, they just didn’t like your look.’ ‘Oh, okay. Yeah, I’ll go process that,'” Gosselaar said in an exclusive sneak peek of the upcoming Hulu documentary KID 90, via People.
In the KID 90 preview, director Soleil Moon Frye also mentions how the industry forces children to grow up too quickly.
“It was intense when I was young, but as a teenager, it was a whole other level of crazy because I developed so quickly and men treated me more like a woman and not a 13-year-old,” Frye said.
Other child stars, as well, have spoken up about the brutality of the industry on children.
MIRACLE ON 34th STREET’s Mara Wilson opened up recently about the amount of sexualization she experienced as a young actress.
Gosselaar continued his role on future SAVED BY THE BELL projects such as the spinoff series SAVED BY THE BELL: THE COLLEGE YEARS from 1993-1994 and the 2020 reboot streaming on Peacock.
The SAVED BY THE BELL reboot is not appropriate for families, as some of the storylines center around a transgender person who is celebrated for “transitioning” from a male to a female.
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