Dustin Diamond released a book last week about his time on Saved By The Bell called Behind The Bell which is available now on Amazon. The tell-most book (as he puts it) is about the good times, the bad times and what it took to put an episode on the air.
When I was offered the opportunity to interview Dustin Diamond, I thought, great I have to interview that d!ck we saw on Celebrity Fit Club and you know what he is not like the guy we saw on that show. He is really a cool guy and explained to me why we perceive him that way.
But before we talk about that, let’s talk about why he wrote a book about the show that made him a household name. Dustin said that after he saw the E! True Hollywood Story about Saved By The Bell and they didn’t go into all the stuff that really went down on the show that he knew he needed to tell the real story. Stuff like Mario Lopez being falsely accused of rape, the fan mail that was going too far for Tiffani-Amber Thiessen and about how production shut down for 6 months because Mark Paul Gosselaar was injured rehearsing for Circus of the Stars. That is stuff we don’t really know about, but the one thing people ask him about all the time after he does his stand up is who hooked up with who back in the day and now when you read his book you will see who did! I can’t wait to find out who was with who and when!!!
When he set out to write the book, he explained to me “In this book, I tried to write with the idea that it’s like you and I are sitting down together and we are just talking. You know that I am sharing these stories with you like in a living or a bar whatever, we are just sitting across from each other and we are just chatting. There are interesting stories in here. Of course there’s little trial and tribulations and there’s some dirt, some gossip. You have to fess up to what you did as a kid. But this doesn’t reflect on who these people are now.” As we know the cast have grown up and they have all taken on different roles with their lives both in-front and behind the camera.
So is he worried about what they will think about his book? He told me that what is wrote is stuff that needs to be told because there is so much that goes on behind-the-scenes that people don’t know about and should know about. He told me that he threw himself under the bus in the book too, so they shouldn’t think it is just one-sided. He also said that not everything in the book is about bad times. There are good times in there too. Plus he goes into detail what it was like to make the show. He also shared with me that after you read the book, you are going to want to go back to watch the old episodes to see stuff you missed. So in ways it will be like watching the show for the first time.
With all the stuff happened while he was on the show and afterwards, I asked him if he regrets doing Saved By The Bell and he told me, “Getting lucky enough to be on a show that in general that would be great. But being a show, and having it be amazing popular and amazing successful. I mean most people dream of that in the acting business. Why would you want to take that back?”
But one show he does regret is Celebrity Fit Club, he said “Everybody thinks what they saw on that show was real. I did it to try to break the Screech image and apparently I am a pretty good actor. I don’t know if I should be flattered.” He told me that he asked him to play the bad guy and that is just what he did. He didn’t realize all the backlash he would get by taking on that role. After I talked to him on the phone, I realized that he was really just playing up the role he says the producers asked him to play. So would he play the bad guy again? He says that he will never do that again! In fact he is so afraid of being perceived as the bad that he might even turn down a role of playing a villain in a scripted movie or show just so people won’t think he is always the bad guy. Dang reality TV for making me think its real because it has real in its name.
When you listen to part of my interview with him above you will hear more about why he wrote Behind The Bell, what is in it and more about Celebrity Fit Club.
Seriously I can’t wait to read Behind the Bell that is out now because as he told me there are so many interesting stories in the book about the show we all grew up watching! And let’s be real who doesn’t want to know more about what went on that we didn’t know about on SBTB especially when it is being told by one of them!!! And that one of them is Dustin Diamond!!!
