Mark Diamond, the father of late Saved by the Bell actor Dustin Diamond, is speaking out against allegations that his son made against him before his death.
Dustin — who was famous for his role as Samuel “Screech” Powers on the beloved nineties sitcom — died at age 44 in 2021, just weeks after he was diagnosed with stage 4 small cell lung cancer.
In the newest episode of Investigation Discovery’s docuseries Hollywood Demons, Mark joined Dustin’s former co-stars on the show to speak about the financial troubles that Dustin publicly faced in the years before his death.
After his decade-long run at Screech came to an end after the Saved by the Bell spinoff, The New Class, finished in 2000, Dustin filed for bankruptcy in 2001.
His financial struggles became public in 2006, when Dustin tried to raise $250,000 by selling t-shirts in order to save his home from being foreclosed on. He gave interviews at the time where he blamed his parents for his financial hardships and accused them of taking his earnings from the teen comedy show.
Dustin told Fox Milwaukee in 2015: “It’s a shame. My parents wasted so much of my hard work. A lot of my youth.”
However, Mark said that Dustin’s claims were far from the truth, and that they “really made me upset.”
“I told him, ‘Why are you throwing me under the bus, when I can’t pop myself on television and go, ‘Uh, no!’” Mark said during Monday’s Hollywood Demons episode.
He continued: “Dustin’s agent would take out her 10-percent commission. Anything left over, we had to cover certain things, like taxes, gasoline, obviously, headshots. Every fan letter wanted the same things — ‘Can you send us an 8×10 picture, autographed?’ Thousands of letters. See, we had to pay for that. This didn’t leave much money for us to do anything. In fact, nothing.”
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Dustin faced several scandals and legal troubles after his time on the show, which aired from 1989 to 1993.
After making headlines for selling t-shirts in 2006, he released his own sex tape that same year in hopes of making money off it.
In December 2014, Dustin was arrested for allegedly pulling a switchblade knife out during a bar fight in which a man was stabbed. His fiancée at the time, Amanda Schutz, was found guilty of disorderly conduct and fined $500 after the incident. Dustin was found guilty of two misdemeanors and sentenced to four months in jail. He was arrested again in 2016 after violating his probation terms.
At the end of the Hollywood Demons episode, Mark revealed that he and Dustin repaired their relationship before the actor’s untimely death.