Saved by the Bell’s Mitchell Hoog Hopes to Futher Onscreen Relationship with Mark-Paul Gosselaar

Saved by the Bell is finally back after nearly 30 years with a whole new generation of students! The show recently debuted on Peacock and features some of the original cast members as well as the newcomers. ComicBook.com recently had the chance to chat with some of the show’s stars, including Dexter Darden (Devante Young), Mitchell Hoog (Mac Morris), Haskiri Velazquez (Daisy Jiménez), and Belmont Cameli (Jamie Spano). Our full interview with Darden went up yesterday and next up is Hoog, who has the exciting job of getting to play the son of Zack Morris (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) and Kelly Kapowski (Tiffani Thiessen). We asked Hoog about working with the original stars and his hopes for a potential Season Two…

THE REBOOT

ComicBook.com: You get the coolest job, which is playing Zack and Kelly’s son. I read that you didn’t watch the original show, but learned from YouTube clips. Did you talk to Mark-Paul Gosselaar at all? Did he have any advice on how to play a Morris?

Mitchell Hoog: I actually didn’t meet Mark until, because he’s a series regular on another show, and so I didn’t actually meet him until, I think it was the sixth table read. Fifth or sixth. I met him actually fairly late in the process. So I was kind of on my own, I guess, from some standpoint. I guess I shouldn’t say on my own, because I had this amazing team of writers and producers to kind of help me out with it.

I think, in my mind, I knew who I was and my place within the whole arc of everything in the whole story, but there were definitely little things… We’d be on set and Tracy Wigfield, our showrunner, or one of the other writers or producers would come up and be like, “Hey, let’s try this because it’s kind of an ode to the original.” I’d be like, “Okay, awesome.” Then I’d go look it up and kind of study it a little.

CB: Mark-Paul wasn’t the only person from the original. The show included Tiffani Thiessen, Elizabeth Berkley, and Mario Lopez. Did any of them have any wisdom to share?

MH: They didn’t really give us any, I guess, advice on the point of how to do it. I think that was one of the beautiful things about it is, they knew that this was kind of a re-imagined Bayside, and they really let us have the freedom of being like, “What do you guys want to make it? We made it what it was back then.” There was this great, beautiful, happy kind of camaraderie in it. And now they kind of handed the baton to us from some standpoint. It was like, “You know, we’re all in this new world together, so let’s figure it out.” So they just kind of let us have our freedom. And I think said, “Have fun with it.” I think that was the best advice that they could have given us

CB: I love how the show doesn’t shy away from social issues. You call out white privilege and poke fun at the original, but not in a mean way. What aspect of those things drew you to the project?

MH: I think all of the combined, especially in a time like this. People do need comfort, and we do need nostalgia, and something to kind of remember, maybe, when times were a little bit better for us. And so when it originally came, of course, I was unaware of what was going on with the pandemic at that point, which was this time last year. But the way Tracy wrote it, how it just kind of intertwined comedy with these social-economic problems, and discrimination, and so many different topics that were easy to comprehend in the comedy, which is really hard to do and really hard to write. So when I first read it, it was just kind of a no-brainer.

SEASON TWO

CB: When there’s a season two, is there anything you’re hoping to see happen on the show? Any subjects to cover or anything you want Mac to do?

MH: That’s a great question. I don’t think so, because I gained this relationship and it kind of ended on a sweet note for me. That kind of reassurance of love from my dad. I think that relationship can always go further. I mean, maybe it would be nice to find a love interest. I don’t know. Mac’s a lonely guy.

CB: That was my next question because we love a good teen romance.

MH: We do. We love them.

CB: I can’t help but think Daisy [Haskiri Velazquez] as the option, but I know it’s a little early for that.

MH: It was funny. I haven’t had the Instagram app for a little bit, and I redownloaded it the other day. I was scrolling through and somebody sent me, I think it may have been Belmont [Cameli], or somebody, they sent me this collage of videos. And it was somebody trying to get Daisy and Mac to date in Season Two. And I was like, “Is this a thing right now? What’s going on?”

CB: Yeah. I feel like there may be an endgame down the line.

MH: Maybe a little something-something.

THE PANDEMIC

CB: I think we were all shocked by your last line of the season, which brings up the pandemic. If there’s a season two, how much do you think they’re going to focus on the pandemic? Or do you think that was just a joke?

MH: I honestly, I can’t say. Our writer’s room – and not even can’t say out of legal reasons – I don’t know. In our writer’s room, I feel constantly surprised. With every table read, we would all sit down and be like kids on Christmas morning. We were so excited to read what was in these 50 pages because we’d have no clue what was going to happen. I think that’s also kind of the fun of the series. So I think that’s to be determined.

CB: How much of it did you shoot during the pandemic?

MH: We went back in August for six weeks and we shot eight, nine, 10, and then a little bit of one. I think that was also one of the really cool things about being a part of the show is, we have this long break, and all of us were diligent enough to kind of think on the topics that were being brought up in society. So once we went back, there were conversations, and stories within the story that we changed, because we were like, “This needs more light right now.” Or, “Okay, we were actually wrong about this the first time. Let’s tweak this a little bit.”

BEHIND-THE-SCENES

CB: Do you any fun behind-the-scenes stories that come to mind?

MH: Ooh, there were so many. One would be, we were all standing in a circle by craft. It was kind of in the back of the studio, and we were just laughing and joking, and something twitched in Josie [Totah]. She squeezed her water bottle and the whole thing went over, and we literally were going to film in two seconds. Cameras were rolling. And now I’m soaked with water so the wardrobe department had some fun with me.

CB: I’m taking a poll. Team Jamie and Aisha or team Jamie and Lexi?

MH: I didn’t even know that was a thing.

CB: Yeah, it is, on Twitter.

MH: Really? I don’t have a Twitter. Okay. So team Jamie or, okay. Um… Yeah. I don’t know if I have an answer on that. I feel like it’s also weird, because we’re like this little family, so thinking, you know?

CB: Yeah. You don’t want to choose between your friends.

MH: Yeah. I don’t know what’s going to happen. Let’s see on the table reads.

BEYOND THE BELL

CB:  You were recently in Freaky, and you’re going to be in the new Conjuring. I’m curious if horror is a favorite genre of yours, or is that just a coincidence? Are any other franchises you’re interested in?

MH: You know, it’s funny. I never expected to do horror. And then once Conjuring came along, which we filmed quite a while ago now, it was just the right time, and the right people, and kind of how it came together. I was like, “You know what? Let’s do it.” And so you always have this perception of what it’s going to be like on a horror set, and you get on it and it’s nothing like that. It was one of the most loving sets I’ve ever been on, even comparing it to Freaky, because Freaky is kind of like a dark, scary, funny new take on a body swap. And so the energy on set, on both, were very, very different, because one was coming from a storyline into other movies, and the other was this re-imagination again of this classic. So I know I had a blast on both sets, and of course, I’d love to do more horror.

I feel like franchise wise, everything that Star Wars has done, I feel like, is always fun. Like Adam Driver being in it, and so many great, great actors and actresses. I think that’d be a fun one to be a part of, of course, right? Who doesn’t want to hold a lightsaber?

CB: That’s actually a good segue because we are ComicBook.com, so I always ask if there’s any superhero that you’d like to play?

MH: Ooh. Well, here’s a fun fact. When I was little, me and my brother, each day, would wake up and pick a different superhero to be. And then we could only use that power. We would just wrestle for hours. Let’s see. Superhero? I think something like Hancock. Kind of like a superhero, but you’re not the man. You’re kind of working there. Something with flying. Superman.

CB: Any upcoming projects that you want to talk about?

MH: There’s one that is coming out called After Masks. So it’s six different stories in the movie, and it’s all tied together through this one logline. And it touches on, not the fact that we’re in this objective pandemic, but it touches on a fact of what we go through subjectively. And so the grief, the loneliness, the pain, the different things that come up when we are in quarantine and lockdown. I think they’re very, very important to talk about.

And each story touches on a different kind of, I guess you’d call it, an emotion. I’m really excited for people to see that one because I think it’ll make people realize that everything that did come up, and maybe nothing came up, but either way, if we knew it or not, we were all together throughout this pandemic.