Mark-Paul Gosselaar

• The Saved by the Bell group is returning to Bayside High School.
• The trio revealed some fascinating show-related insights.
• “I played Jesse, so I think that was for me, the right fit.”

On Saturday at the 2023 90s Con in Hartford, Connecticut, Elizabeth Berkley reunited with her old Saved by the Bell co-stars Mario Lopez and Mark-Paul Gosselaar.

The Saved by the Bell group is returning to Bayside High School!

Alumni of the series Elizabeth Berkley, Mario Lopez, and Mark-Paul Gosselaar reunited at 90s Con in Hartford, Connecticut, on Saturday to reflect on their time on the famous show. While together, the trio revealed some fascinating show-related insights, like what Berkley, 48, would have worn if she had dressed up for a ’90s contest.

“Oh, Jessie Spano,” she said, referencing her own character. “It’s funny. During the pandemic, we were shooting something where we were all at home and we had to do like a throwback look of our characters.”

She continued, “I ordered Jessie stuff from Amazon because we didn’t have a wardrobe person and I was like, ‘Oh, would this be what it would be if it was Halloween?’ It’s an easy costume.”

Berkley also revealed she was also up for costar Tiffani Thiessen’s eventual role as Kelly Kapowski, but the casting team “had a hard time deciding between us.”

“I played Jesse, so I think that was for me, the right fit,” she said. “I was also grateful they worked it all out.”

Lopez and Gosselaar, both 49, reminisced about their earlier days, particularly their hairstyles.

“They should’ve canceled my hair back in the day,” Lopez joked.

“I always find it fascinating that people ask me like, ‘That wasn’t your real hair?’ From season to season it changed,” Gosselaar then said, joking that it was “not a color you can put on a driver’s license.”

The panel brought up sentimental feelings for the cast as well. “When you’re young, you don’t really have time to process things and you take a lot of things for granted,” said Lopez.

“It goes by really quick. So I think as you get older, you realize, wow, you know, time is fleeting,” he continued. “That was such a special part of our lives that you wish you wish you could just kind of bottle up and sort of take it with you wherever you go.”

But even with the legacy the show has, Gosselaar didn’t think the series would initially survive. “We thought we were getting canceled after every season,” he said.

“Because it was a Saturday morning show, we didn’t have a normal run,” he continued. “A normal run would be … 22 [episodes]. So that’s a full season. We would go back to our lives and then you go to seven, then you’re like ‘Are we doing more now?’ We go back to school, and it will be called back.”

“I think we had probably five or six wrap parties where we were like ‘This is it. We’ll never see each other again. Bye,'” he added. “We just never thought the show was being watched by anybody until it went into syndication.”

The Bell Saved the Day From 1989 and 1993, it aired on NBC for four seasons. It premiered as a reboot of the Disney Channel sitcom Good Morning, Miss Bliss, and stars Gosselaar, Lark Voorhies, Dustin Diamond, Dennis Haskins, and Hayley Mills. Except from Mills, they all joined the NBC sitcom, which later became Saved by the Bell: The New Class.

From 2020 to 2021, Peacock broadcast a two-season remake of Saved by the Bell. In the series, Lopez, Gosselaar, Berkley, Thiessen, and Voorhies all reprised their roles.

After the first series ended in 1993, most of the cast has kept in contact. In 2019, Lopez, Gosselaar, Berkley, and Thiessen gathered for dinner with some of their spouses.

“This is what 30+ years of friendship looks like,” Gosselaar captioned the group shot.

Despite the strain Diamond caused among the ensemble, the actors all expressed passionate condolences when he died of cancer in February 2021.

“Dustin, you will be missed my man,” Lopez wrote on Instagram. “The fragility of this life is something never to be taken for granted. Prayers for your family will continue on.”

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