Found: Mark-Paul Gosselar Calls Zack Morris the Darkest Character He’s Ever Played

Found is a new NBC procedural series that follows a team led by former kidnap victim Gabi Mosely (Shanola Hampton) as they try to find missing persons. However, Gabi has a secret… she’s keeping the man who kidnapped her, Sir, in her basement. The role of the villainous Sir is played by Mark-Paul Gosselar, who is best known for playing Zack Morris in Saved by the Bell. ComicBook.com recently had the chance to chat with Gosselar, and we asked if Sir is the darkest character he’s ever played. Funny enough, Gosselar thinks that title belongs to Zack, 

“I think it belongs to Zack Morris,” Gosselaar said when asked if Sir is his darkest character. “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. 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 behavior. He’s not wrong.”

“He really was,” Gosselaar added about Zack Morris being a villain. “And again, you can look at it… 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 really is a disgusting, grotesque … a really despicable character.” 

While Gosselaar was having a little fun calling Zack Morris his darkest character, he clearly knows Sir is much worse. In fact, he revealed to ComicBook.com that the character is partly based on Ted Bundy.

“Some people have asked you know, ‘Were you inspired by Dexter or Criminal Minds?’ There was another, Blacklist. But no, the only thing, cause I had asked our showrunner, Nkechi Okoro Carroll… I had asked her, I like to do research on roles that I’m playing. ‘Is there anything that I should be looking at? …  Did you have a muse for Sir that inspired you?’ And she said, ‘You know what, try to look at documentaries on Ted Bundy,’” Gosselar explained

“And I thought, ‘Huh, that’s an interesting one,’” he continued. “She goes, ‘Because he was a charismatic guy. He was not your typical-looking serial killer.’ She said, ‘You’re not gonna do the things that he did, but the way that he was charismatic and the way he charmed and looked and was able to sort of not define the typical person that we think would do these horrendous things. That’s who you should sort of base a lot of things that Sir does.’” 

You can watch our interview with Mark-Paul Gosselaar at the top of the page.

Found‘s next episode airs on NBC on December 12th. In the meantime, you can catch up on the series on Peacock.