The upcoming Saved By The Bell revival for NBCUniversal‘s Peacock streaming service will bring viewers back to Bayside High School as it not just revisits favorites like Zack Morris (Mark-Paul Gosselaar), AC Slater (Mario Lopez), and Jessie Spano (Elizabeth Berkeley) as adults but turns the focus onto their children as well. But for fans hoping to the new series will be simply an updated take on the beloved classic, it sounds like they’ll be getting a bit more than that. In a recent interview, Lopez explained that the new series will be both edgier and hipper than the original — and isn’t shot in front of a studio audience, either.
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“Well, it’s not shot in front of a studio audience,” Lopez tells The John Roa Show. “It’s shot on film this time and Tracy Wigfield who’s the showrunner who did 30 Rock… she’s there this time around. It’s a little edgier, not like dirty by any means, but a little edgier and hipper and a lot of fun. We have a great young cast. And some of the old cast is back. And it’s pretty clever the way they’ve sort of set the characters to where they are now.”
Lopez’s comments about the new series being edgier are in keeping with what he recently told Showbiz Cheat Sheet in which he also acknowledged the pandemic’s impact on the filming of the series, which was originally planned for a 2020 debut.
“We’re only two episodes away from being done with the first season,” he said. “And then the pandemic hit. So, we want to get back there and get it on the air.”
Exclusive to the Peacock streaming service. the Saved By The Bell revival will see Zack Morris now the Governor of California who, after getting into hot water for closing too many low-income schools, introduces a proposal that sends the students from those closed schools to the highest-performing institutions in the state — which includes Bayside High. These new students will give the privileged kids at Bayside a little bit of the reality that they’ve been missing.
In terms of cast, Lopez, Gosselaar, and Berkeley will be joined by John Michael Higgins as Bayside’s Principal Toddman, and Josie Totah, Haskiri Velazquez, Mitchell Hoog, Alycia Pascual-Pena, and Belmont Cameli as a new generation of kids. 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, Berkley, and Gosselaar are also set to produce.
What do you think about Lopez’ description of the new Saved By the Bell? Let us know in comments!
