Nineties star unrecognisable in thrilling new series Found

The actor looks nothing like the character he played in the beloved 90s sitcom that made him a household name.

If you grew up in the ’90s, chances are you frothed over Mark-Paul Gosselaar on Saved By The Bell.

The teen sitcom launched the career of Gosselaar who, aged just 15 at the time, played everybody’s high school crush Zack Morris.

However, the actor is virtually unrecognisable in his new TV role with not one California blonde strand to be seen.

In the new NBC series Found, which premieres locally on BINGE December 11, Gosselaar plays a kidnapper called Sir who is held against his will in the basement of public relations specialist Gabi Mosel, played by Shameless star Shanola Hampton.

Mark-Paul Gosselaar stars in the thrilling new series Found. Picture: NBC

The actor looks unrecognisable in scenes from the series. Picture: NBC

Sir kidnapped Gabi when she was a child. Now as an adult who runs a private firm that locates missing persons, she tracked him down and is forcing him to help her solve crimes from her basement.

It’s a role that plunged Gosselaar into a dark space, so dark he looked to infamous American serial killer Ted Bundy for inspiration before filming took place in Atlanta.

“He was very charismatic,” Gosselaar told UPI earlier this month. “He was very disarming, not what you would think as someone who would typically do something like what he did.”

Still, Sir is not the darkest character the actor has played on screen. In his eyes, the title surprisingly “belongs to Zack Morris”.

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Shanola Hampton also stars in Found. Picture: NBC

“If you ever watch Zack Morris Is Trash on YouTube by Dashiell Driscoll … He wrote Zack Morris Is Trash, and he’s not wrong about a lot of the things,” Gosselaar recently told

ComicBook.com.

“Zack Morris: master manipulator, some nefarious activities. I think I was bred to play roles like Sir just because I started my career playing one of the most nefarious characters on television. Of course, that’s tongue in cheek, but you know, the way that Dashiell exposes Zack for all his bad behaviour. He’s not wrong.”

Saved By the Bell cast (from left to right): Mario Lopez, Dennis Haskins, Lark Voorhies, Tiffani Thiessen, Elizabeth Berkley, Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Dustin Diamond.

Gosselaar as Zack Morris and Mario Lopez as A.C. Slater. Picture: Paul Drinkwater/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank

“I don’t think you can look at Sir and say, ‘Oh, from a different angle, Sir is a good human being.’ He’s really not,” he added. “He really is a disgusting, grotesque … a really despicable character.”

Gosselaar played Zack Morris on Saved By The Bell from 1989 to 1992. The series was rebooted in 2020 on US network Peacock, but it only lasted two seasons before it was cancelled. The actor and his original co-stars Tiffani Thiessen, Mario Lopez, Elizabeth Berkley, and Lark Voorhies all made cameos in the reboot.

However, Dustin Diamond did not return as the geeky Screech, Zack’s best friend on the show. Diamond passed away aged 44 in 2021 from lung cancer, and he was honoured as Season 2 of the reboot premiered.

Found Season 1 is now streaming on BINGE