EXCLUSIVE: 'Saved by the Bell' Star Dennis Haskins Died Amid Feud

Saved by the Bell star Dennis Haskins went to his grave at 75, devastated he was cut out by the cast from a 2009 reunion, RadarOnline.com can reveal.

The Chattanooga, Tenn., native played Mr. Belding, the good-natured principal of Bayside High School on the beloved teen sitcom, which ran from 1989 to 1993, as well as on several spinoffs.

So he was irate when his former costars, who included Mario Lopez, Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Tiffani Thiessen, Elizabeth Berkley and Lark Voorhies, got back together for a photo shoot in 2009, a reunion he kickstarted when he became the first Saved by the Bell alum to appear on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.

"I earned the right to be there," he insisted. "If anybody deserved to be [there], it was Dennis Haskins.

"Whatever you want to talk about, that show was six students and the principal. They were the heart of the show," he explained.

He said he spoke up because he wanted "people to know it was not my choice not to be there, because I would have been there. It hurts my feelings, but I'll live."

At the time, rumors were circulating that the other cast members only agreed to do the photo shoot if Haskins and Dustin Diamond, who played their classmate Screech, were excluded.

At the time, Diamond, who died of lung cancer in 2021, was trying to find a publisher for his tell-all memoir, Behind the Bell, which reportedly was going to air a lot of the young actors' dirty laundry.

In 2015, six years after the reunion of the other cast members, Haskins recalled his days as Richard Belding with fondness, despite being frozen out of the meetup.