Tiffani Thiessen says the residual checks from Saved by the Bell have basically stopped, more than two decades after the sitcom wrapped. "I think it has dried out," she said on a Sept. 24 appearance on Page Six Radio. "It's like, negative now. It costs more to print the check." She compared it to Residuals, the old L.A. bar where actors used to cash a 38-cent check for a drink. Thiessen played Kelly Kapowski across the show's four-season run on NBC from 1989 to 1993, alongside Mario Lopez, Dustin Diamond, Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Elizabeth Berkley and Lark Voorhies. The franchise spawned Saved by the Bell: The College Years, the spin-off Saved by the Bell: The New Class and a two-season reboot in 2020. The staying power never turned into money for the original cast, she said. "We didn't have pull on that show at all. We made nothing and we just did our job." She noted a slight bump when the series moved to a primetime slot for one season, but said the real change came after she left. "I didn't start making real money until I went to 90210," she said of her later role on Beverly Hills, 90210. Mario Lopez has said the young cast started around $1,500 an episode and eventually topped out near $3,500. He called it "cartoon money" because the show aired on Saturday mornings instead of primetime. By 1991, after season 2, Saved by the Bell was bringing in roughly $15 million in advertising. Mark-Paul Gosselaar put it more bluntly in 2019: "We made really bad deals. Poor deals, back then." A friend of the late Dustin Diamond later displayed a 2002 residual check for $12.74. She isn't alone. Full House star Jodie Sweetin, who played Stephanie Tanner for all eight seasons, said on an April episode of the McBride Rewind podcast that she'd recently gotten a residual check for a single cent. Sweetin, 44, blamed the shift to streaming. "There's no syndication anymore because it's all in streaming," she said. "Who gets paid for that? Nobody gets paid for that."