Stephen Colbert Shares a Story of How He Auditioned For Screech in SAVED BY THE BELL
During a recent interview with Ryan Reynolds on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Saved By The Bell came up in the conversation and Stephen Colbert excitedly jumped at the chance to tell a story of how he actually auditioned for the series. In fact, he auditioned for the role of Screech, which is the role Dustin Diamond ended up landing.
It’s around the 3:00 mark in the video below, where Reynolds makes a joke about Saved by the Bell, which is what sparked Colbert’s memory and this is what he said:
“I auditioned for Saved by the Bell! That was my first professional audition. 1986? [Editor’s note: this must have been when they were auditioning Good Morning, Miss Bliss, which was eventually reworked into the hit show Saved by the Bell.] They came to Chicago. I was a student at Northwestern University, and I don’t know, somebody had seen me do something, somebody had scouted me at school. I got called down to a casting agent on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, I walk in, they hand me the thing, and I was auditioning for the part of – was the character’s name Screech?”
He went on to say that he isn’t joking about this and added:
“I auditioned for this part of Screech, and let me tell you how big I was. Imagine how that character ended up in broadcast. I did my audition, and they said to me. ‘There’s a term you’re going to need to know about as a professional. It’s called over the top. You just went over the top. Don’t do that anymore.’ And I saw the subtle interplay of status dynamics that Dustin Diamond brought to that part.”
Colbert’s life would have gone in a much different direction had he actually nailed the audition and landed the role. But, it wasn’t meant to be. It’s an interesting alternate universe to think about, though!