The Saved By The Bell reboot will feature a tribute to late actor Dustin Diamond, producers have said.
Diamond, who starred in the popular comedy series and its spin-offs as Samuel “Screech” Powers, died in February aged 44 after being diagnosed with lung cancer.
He did not appear in the first season of the Saved By The Bell reboot, although there had been discussions about him joining the forthcoming second season.
Executive producer Tracey Wigfield told Variety that original cast members including Elizabeth Berkley Lauren and Mario Lopez felt it was important to include a tribute to Diamond.
She said: “It would have been wrong to not acknowledge that in a real way and to not have our OG characters mourning this character that we’ll never get to see again.
“That, I wanted to put on the screen, but I just wanted to make sure we were being as sensitive as possible. There was a real guy who had people who loved him. You don’t want to make any jokes or talk about it in any way that might hurt anyone’s feelings.”
For the tribute, the cast members will reunite at their old favourite haunt, The Max, to remember Screech.
It will include clips of the character from the original series, with Wigfield saying the footage was carefully chosen because a lot of what Screech was known for was “being the butt of a joke or being an outrageous character and what we were hoping for was using the clips to show how important he was to the show, but also to the other characters in the show”.
Diamond played Screech, the nerdy sidekick in Saved By The Bell, from 1989-1993 and reprised the role in the follow-up series Saved By The Bell: The New Class and Saved By The Bell: The College Years.
He was a contestant on the 12th series of Celebrity Big Brother in 2013, and was evicted on day 16.
