Dustin Diamond Says Screech Should Be In The ‘Saved By The Bell’ Reboot

By Brent Furdyk. Published: 26 Feb 2020 4:43 PM Last updated: 26 Feb 2020 6:07 PM

When NBCUniversal announced plans to reboot “Saved By the Bell” on its new streaming service, Peacock, one cast member was conspicious by his absence: Dustin Diamond, who played Samuel “Screech” Powers on the beloved sitcom.

While it’s been confirmed that original stars Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Elizabeth Berkley, Mario Lopez and Tiffani Theissen will be reprising their roles (albeit in varying capacities), there has been no mention of Diamond being associated with the reboot.

Diamond spoke with TMZ about the reboot, and confirmed that he hasn’t been approached to participate — which he feels is just wrong.

“Out of all the cast members, I was in… the most [episodes], and that’s not the case anymore if I’m not in the new one,” Diamond said. “And how do you have ‘Saved by the Bell’ without Screech, right? It seems like there’s a missed opportunity there.”

The way Diamond sees it, not reassembling the entire cast is doing a disservice to fans.

“Everybody should be thinking we should all be part of this… you have to have all the cast members, you know? If it’s a reboot of the entire series, you should bring back all the staples,” he said.

In fact, he even pitched an idea for what grown-up Screech would be up to in 2020. “Screech should be dealing with parenthood and dealing with his kids, and finding out that… maybe he wasn’t a barrel full of roses to deal with growing up,” he said.

Diamond has had issues with the rest of the cast ever since the publication of his salacious 2009 tell-all Behind the Bell, which including allegations of drug use among the cast and claims that everybody in the cast was “sleeping around” with each other.

In 2016, Diamond appeared on “Dr. Oz” and made a public apology to the cast, claiming the book was written by a ghostwriter and explaining his attempt at “repairing the damage that was caused by things that were done by people who took advantage of me and the situation I was in at the time.”