What Tiffani Thiessen Watches (and Plays) With Her Kids

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Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Getty Images, Netflix, Paramount, Disney, NBC, Everett Collection When Tiffani Thiessen was just 14 years old, she won Teen’s Great Model Search, earning herself a spot on the magazine’s cover. A year later, after CoverGirl named her its model of the year, she landed a role on Saved by the Bell, where she cemented her place in American pop culture as cheerleader and fought-over love interest Kelly Kapowski.

That’s part of the reason why Thiessen says it’s so “freaky” now to watch her own 16-year-old daughter navigate her teens and live the same idyllic high-school life that her mom went through onscreen. “To see her ready to drive and all those things, it’s crazy,” she says. “She’s becoming more confident, and we even went to look at colleges this summer just for fun because we’ll be getting into that next year.”

With an 11-year-old son with a passion for skateboarding in the family too, Thiessen is no stranger to the mom game. That doesn’t mean she has gotten used to it, though. On the new Freeform series Coven Academy, Thiessen plays the head of a New Orleans school for teenage witches. During the press junket for the show, she says, she’s been asked many times what sort of witchy power she’d like to have herself. There’s always only one answer.

“I just want to stop time a little bit or at least slow it down,” she says. “My kids’ lives are going so fast, and I’m trying to cherish every moment I can.”

Photo: Fryderyk Gabowicz/picture alliance via Getty Images We always listen to the ’90s hip-hop or R&B Sirius XM stations in the car, and my kids know every single song. I will never not think that the ’90s has the best music. The second best is Y2K.

I took them all to Backstreet Boys at the Sphere last year. I felt like a 19-year-old all over again, and they were all into it just as much as me. They knew every song and every word. It was a very proud moment.

Photo: Bruce Yeung/Getty Images I’d say the thing we’re doing as a family the most right now is actually playing pickleball. My kids are amazing pickleball players — my son especially. It’s kind of his new sport, and he’s gotten really good. The only sad part is that they’re actually now better than my husband and I. They’re so much more coordinated than we are. I mean, I was just talking about my bad hip, like, “I can’t even walk today.”

Photo: Getty Images We love Rummikub. It’s probably one of our most favorite games to play, especially in the summertime. We break it out and then the game’ll sit there the entire summer. We also love to put puzzles together. The kids actually still love it, too, which is crazy. Old school.

Photo: Netflix/Everett Collection We love the fun cooking shows. My son, especially, that’s a favorite for sure. But we also really love Love on the Spectrum.

I love the innocence of it. I love the kindness of it. I love that my kids love it. They love the people. I mean, they’ve really responded to the show since day one so we’ve watched all the seasons.

Photo: Joshua Weissman via YouTube My daughter will find these cooking videos online and send them to me. Like, she just sent me one last week, saying “Can we make these?” And I was like, “Yeah, we absolutely can. I have everything in the fridge.”

It’s a lot of that or a lot of beauty content, where she’s like, “What do you think of this product?” and I’m like, “Don’t ask me. You know more than I do.”

Photo: Paramount/Everett Collection One movie I was sad they didn’t love as much as I do was Footloose. I think it’s because it just moves so much slower than they’re used to. I loved watching it with them, but they were like, “Meh.” I ended up being like, “You don’t understand Kevin Bacon! You don’t understand!”

Photo: David Astorga/Disney I’m excited for my kids to watch Coven Academy because I know they will really love it, especially my son. My kids are in two different worlds in terms of what they’re watching. Like, my daughter’s all into the YA stuff and has been for a bit now. She’s a junior in high school. But my son is just getting into scarier things now that he’s 11 because he feels more confident about watching that kind of stuff, so that’s fun.

Right when he was, like, 9, he started reading Goosebumps and then just last year he started watching Stranger Things and was in love. He likes Wednesday too, which is a step up in terms of scariness.

Photo: Jack Rowand/Disney Channel/Everett Collection When my daughter was younger, we watched Descendants together. I loved all the Descendants movies. What I really loved was that when Zombies came around, my son also watched those and loved them so it became one of those movies the whole family could watch together.

Also, I grew up on Grease. These movies are basically another version of Grease, so it’s absolutely my world.

Photo: Paul Drinkwater/NBC/Everett Collection My daughter watched all of the seasons of Saved by the Bell and the movies right at the start of COVID. Her response was “I don’t think the show would hold up if it was on today,” and I was like, “I think you’re right.” But then she said, “But you were cute, mom. You were really cute.”

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