Of all of the programs coming to NBC’s Peacock streaming service, fans are especially curious – and potentially apprehensive – about the Saved by the Bell revival. The modern take on the iconic 1990s sitcom has quite a lot of mystery surrounding it, including who will fill the role of Bayside High’s principal. The original show and its various spinoffs were grounded by Principal Richard Belding (Dennis Haskins), and now we know who will be filling his shoes. According to TVLine, John Michael Higgins has been cast as Principal Toddman, the “beleagured” principal of a modern-day Bayside High.
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Higgins is a prolific character actor, whose work includes the Pitch Perfect movies, The Legend of Korra, and America Says. According to the character description, Principal Toddman is constantly being pranked by his privileged students and yelled at by their entitled parents. But all this changes when Bayside gets an influx of new, low-income students and Toddman gets a second chance to really make a difference.
The Saved by the Bell revival is set to lean into that aforementioned concept, as original protagonist Zach Morris (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) now acting as the Governor of California. After getting into hot water for closing too many low-income schools, Morris introduces a proposal that sends the students from those closed schools to the highest-performing institutions in the state, including Bayside High. These new students will give the privileged kids at Bayside a little bit of the reality that they’ve been missing.
Jessie Spano (Elizabeth Berkley) and A.C Slater (Mario Lopez) are expected to return for the revival, and will reportedly be parents of the new kids. Gosselaar revealed in September that he has yet to be approached to reprise his role.
Great News creator Tracey Wigfield will serve as showrunner and executive producer of the Saved by the Bell reboot, following her new overall deal with NBCUniversal. She will be joined by original series creator Peter Engel and Franco Bario (Great News). Lopez and Berkley are also set to produce.
“I’m okay, I mean me personally, with never seeing a reboot ever again,” Gosselaar previously told THR‘s Award Chatter podcast. “I like original content. I really appreciate what Cobra Kai has done. I appreciate what Roseanne has done… what Fuller House has done, it’s great. 90210 now is, I heard, for Fox. But I’m okay with never seeing a reboot ever again… If it was a good product that I felt wouldn’t tarnish the original product, then yeah. I’m open to hearing anything.”
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