Still Not Old

Dennis Haskins on his ties to Charles Barkley, “Saved by the Bell 2000″ and post-Ceausescu Romania.

Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, is expected any day now to announce his highly anticipated selection for vice president. A million names, it seems, have made the tightly secured list, including those of Sens. Evan Bayh, Jim Webb and, of course, Hillary Clinton.

Now, imagine if Dennis Haskins, the actor who played Principal Richard Belding on the ubiquitous 1990s teen sitcom “Saved by the Bell,” were to emerge among all of the governors, senators and other big names as Obama’s veep.

This is the ridiculously random scenario I dreamed several nights ago. There they were, hand in hand in front of thousands, Obama and Haskins. Sporting a slightly mullet hairdo and appearing noticeably thinner than he is today, Haskins resembled the Mr. Belding of the earliest seasons of “Saved by the Bell.” What struck me was that Haskins was actually running on Obama’s ticket as himself, instead of the fictional persona for which he is best known.

The dream was enough of an impetus for me to dig through my old tape recordings from my days as an editor at The Commonwealth Times, Virginia Commonwealth University’s student newspaper, and dig out a recorded conversation I had with the actor in August 2006. Haskins, whose recent screen credits include a guest role as an alleged child-molesting coach on FX’s “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” squeezed in a few minutes of questions with me before he shared a trivia game full of “Saved by the Bell” anecdotes with an auditorium filled with nostalgic VCU students. Haskins in recent years has traveled the university lecture circuit, offering motivational advice and recollections about Mr. Belding, who, Haskins told the VCU crowd, was originally scripted for a black man.

I had a slew of questions to ask Haskins but managed to get in only a few. The following is a transcription of our conversation.

Q: What brought you to VCU?

A: Well, I’ve been coming to VCU for the last 10 years to be here with Charles Barkley to support VCU Athletics. My good friend Dr. Richard Sander is married to a former high-school friend of mine, Mary Sander, his wife. We went to high school together, and I knew Charles’ assistant basketball coach, Mack McCarthy, who came in when Sunny Smith was here to take over the program. That’s my connection. Mack and Charles said, “Why don’t you come up here and do this with us also?” So I came up and I started doing this, and I’ve really fallen in love with the people here and the school and the program. Of course, Sunny’s gone and Mack’s gone, and even Mack’s assistant Jeff is gone. We just met Anthony Grant, and he’s terrific. So it’s just, we come up here because the people are so nice, and I have a history with Dr. Sander and his wife and a few other people. We would like to come and support the school. We do a lot of charity events in the summer – Charles and I, not together, but I do Alice Cooper, Vince Neil and Jim Kelley, that’s who called me, was Jim Kelly – raising money for various causes around the country, from kids that are homeless to cancer research to athletics or whatever. So this is kind of our chance to take a deep breath and wind down. I hosted Charles’ event every year, and since I’m doing this at colleges all across the country, this is a chance for me do this here for the students at VCU.

Q: That leads me to my next question. When you are speaking to college or university students, do you tend to speak as yourself or Mr. Belding or a little bit of both?

[Haskins appeared visibly frustrated that I would suggest he and Mr. Belding were one and the same.]

A: Well, I am myself, and I come to this as the guy who played Mr. Belding on “Saved by the Bell.” One of the things that I’ve come to know is that a lot of schools and the people that run the schools want me to address some leadership points, but I know the audience is coming because they watched “Saved by the Bell” and grew up with it. It was an amazing run that the show had because we were the very first sitcom that was on Saturday mornings for kids; the other shows were cartoons. These kids grew up, literally grew up, with our show. They’re not kids anymore, these college students (who) grew up watching our show. So yes, I am the guy that played Mr. Belding, and yes, we will talk about “Saved by the Bell.” We’ll talk about various things about my career and about “Saved by the Bell,” and then I’ll have a trivia contest, and we will have fun doing “Saved by the Bell” stuff. But I’m not here acting like Mr. Belding. I’m Dennis Haskins talking about what I did when I played Mr. Belding. I give long answers to short questions; have you noticed? [Laughs]

Q: You played Mr. Belding for 12 years –

A: Actually, 11. Well, I played Mr. Belding on “Good Morning, Miss Bliss,” which was in 1988, and then they bought the rights to 3, 4, of the characters, including Mr. Belding, and created “Saved by the Bell” in 1989. So 1989 through 1998, I did the job. The show ran 1989 through 2000, so whatever that adds up from the original class to all the different incarnations of the new class. I went through 10 different cast changes. But I was there from start to finish.

Q: Since you played him so long, did playing the character ever feel like a 9-5 type of job?

A: Listen, I love to act, and the opportunity to act everyday was a blessing. The fact that I got to do it on a show that I liked to do was fun as well. The job is not always easy. I mean, acting is a job. You get paid; there’s a lot of money at stake. It cost $400,000-plus to do our episodes. That’s relatively cheap compared to prime time, which is a million and a half to two million, but it’s still a lot of money at risk. The original cast and I were in the business to be actors, and we all got this job together and created a show that became very successful. “The New Class” kids that came in originally were kind of excited about being on “Saved by the Bell,” you know, and they were younger and less experienced. But they hit a show that was already running at full speed. So little by little they would replace people that they thought could have done a little better – maybe they didn’t cast them properly, maybe it was their fault, you know, the producers’ fault – but eventually we ended up with some “New Class” kids that were really good.

Q: When “The New Class” did end in 2000, what was your reaction?

A: Well, actually, they had come to me and said, “We’re thinking about doing another version.” They were thinking about doing “Saved by the Bell 2000.” And I said, “You know what, I really think I’ve done all I can do with this character.” We’ve had 3,000 proms and dances and, you know – I mean, of course, not really, not literally 3,000. We had done a lot of different situations, from proms and dances to different things that happened to different people, and I thought we had kind of run out of story ideas as far as Mr. Belding and Screech were concerned, for sure. If I ever wanted to do anything different than Mr. Belding, I better start moving on and try to do other stuff because you can get stereotyped. By the way, stereotyping is not a bad thing. Stereotyping happens because people like the character you played, and they watched it for so long they identify you with that, and that means you were successful. Then you have to create other things that become as successful in order to balance out that stereotyping. That’s what I’m in the business of doing now.

Q: This is sort of a hypothetical question. If “Saved by the Bell 2000” had gone on, where would Mr. Belding be? Would he be a superintendent? Would he have retired?

A: That’s a good question. I never thought about that. Well, as a matter of fact, the last episode of “Saved by the Bell: The New Class,” which you probably didn’t watch, they did do a two-parter where Mr. Belding accepted a job as dean of students at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Now that’s my alma mater in real life, so that’s where he would have gone. He left and moved on to another job, so he would not have been a part of “2000.” We only have a couple – I apologize – but we’re really tight. A couple more questions.

Q: Sure. Where do you see “Saved by the Bell” 20 years from now?

A: Well, the way it’s going, it’ll still be re-running 4, 5, times a day. It’s unbelievable. I think “Saved by the Bell” has had its place in teen culture because it was the first. I just ran into Kelly Packard, who played Tiffany on “California Dreams,” last weekend. Their show was really good, but it wasn’t first. Then “Hang Time” came in and “One World” and stuff like that – they’re all Saturday-morning shows. But it’s really hard when this was the first show to do better. So the fact that we were the first gives it a place in history. The show went to 87 countries around the world. I just flew last week with a kid from Kuwait, who said he grew up watching my show. I don’t know what to make of that. I mean, it’s a really nice thing to hear but it’s overwhelming to me. I mean, I’ve been to Romania, and people know me because when Ceausescu was assassinated, the first show they put on the air was “Saved by the Bell.” I mean, it’s unbelievable – because it was safe, it’s American high school, and they wanted to see that. So in a global sense it’s definitely had an impact. And it got horrible ratings at the beginning, but I’m very proud. I’ve had many people come up to me and say, “We learned to speak English watching your show.” What do you say to that besides “thank you”? It’s very cool. I’m gonna have to let you guys figure out where it fits in history because I was part of it; you’ve been watching it, and you’ll have a better perspective than me.

Q: I actually watched two episodes today.

A: You watched two episodes today? See, that’s exactly what I’m talking about! People are still watching the show. The show that would not die – and that’s OK.

Q: I understand your time is tight, so to finish up here, what advice would Mr. Belding give to VCU students?

A: Well, you know, Mr. Belding always tried to do what’s right for the kids at Bayside High School. He enjoyed being with them and hanging out with them, but when it came down to it, he tried to do what’s right for them. Dennis Haskins would say to the students at VCU, take advantage of every opportunity you have while you’re going to college. Don’t just go to college; be involved in college. There are so many opportunities here to try things that you’ll never get to try anywhere else. I’ve done a lot of USO tours and met a lot of soldiers, men and women in Afghanistan, Pakistan, places like that – there are a lot of people like that would love to trade places with you VCU students, so honor them by really doing your best here. Take chances; think outside of the box. Risk failure, because failure’s a word that really shouldn’t exist. If you try something and it doesn’t work, at least you learned it doesn’t work. And follow your dreams; if you have a dream, try it because it just might work out, and wouldn’t it be great to make a living doing what you love to do?

-tad

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 9th, 2008 at 8:23 pm and is filed under .tad, Interviews, Live action serials, Movies.