Mark Paul Gosselaar reunites with his NYPD Blue producer Steven Bochco on the new legal drama Raising the Bar. They go back even further, as Gosselaar recalls the impact Bochco has had on his career.
Mark-Paul Gosselaar Talks Raising the Bar
"It was actually for Philly that I came in and read for Steven," said Gosselaar. "I knew the name. I had never seen an episode of NYPD Blue. I'm actually pretty young. I didn't see Hill Street so I just did my work. Then I remember him saying right in the room, 'You are good.' And I thought, 'Thank you.' He had such an honest quality about him. To say that to an actor, I didn't know how to take that. I didn't get Philly but three weeks later, he said that he would think about another character on NYPD Blue. Half a year later, I was on that show. I'm still in shock from that meeting that he is able to see a quality in an actor and take him through a process. I feel like I blossomed and developed on that show to do the work that I'm doing now. He creates an environment that allows actors to do that and you feel safe being with him."
Gosselaar sports a new look on Raising the Bar. His long hair reflects the young lawyer's workaholic nature, giving up time for simple things like grooming. "Less work for me too as an actor," Gosselaar joked. "Instead of having to become the character, I just grow my hair out. It's the same character I'm playing on everything I've ever played before. I just change the hair. It works a lot easier for me."
Raising the Bar
Recalling his days as a child star, Gosselaar says it was not a tough transition to be taken seriously as a grown-up actor. "The thing that is sometimes hard for people to understand is even at 12-years-old, that character that I played on Saved by the Bell, if you look at me and you look at the progression that I made, I played a character on that show. There were some people on that show that that was their persona, but for me that was a character."
In this case, he is quite serious about hair. "I did not have blonde hair. Every so often I'd have to get my hair dyed and play that character. That's not how I styled my hair. It's not the type of clothes I would wear. That was a character. That was not Mark Paul in school. So we learned how to act on that show as well. Even being as silly as it was, I took it very professionally and I learned a lot in the six years of doing that show, how to conduct business so that when I left that show, it's not that I had to completely retrain my process. When I met Steven, I was already on board to do the work that was presented to me. Then meeting, talk about Dennis [Franz], Dennis was the best teacher that anyone could ever have for another four years."
Catch Gosselaar on Raising the Bar staring Labor Day on TNT.
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