Peacock’s revival of Saved By The Bell isn’t out yet, but the upcoming series became the subject of a lot of discourse recently over its exclusion of Lark Vorhees, who portrayed fan fave Lisa Turtle, the sole Black cast member in the original ensemble. The original series ran from 1989 to 1993 on NBC.

In an interview with TVLine, Zack Morris’ portrayer Mark-Paul Gosselaar stated how the revival retains elements from Zack Morris is Trash, a web series from Dashiell Driscoll that showcases the unlikability of the titular character.

“I’m a huge fan of that series,” Gosselaar said. “And some of that is in [the revival], which I absolutely love: Zack Morris being a little offensive and sort of not being on the right side of things.”

In the revival, the topic of school busing will be explored. Now the governor of California, Zack Morris becomes the subject of scrutiny over his decision to close many low-income high schools and sends many students impacted to Bayside High.

“Script-wise, these aren’t the scripts we got [31 years ago],” Gosselaar said. “I don’t think you could do that. That’s sort of just across the board with television: There’s a lot of things we did [then] that we’re not doing now…and I don’t know necessarily that it would be appropriate [to do things the same way].”

In the upcoming revival series, original stars Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Mario Lopez, Tiffani-Amber Thiessen and Elizabeth Berkley will appear, as well as the new group of students, portrayed by Josie Totah, Dexter Darden, Alycia Pascual-Peña, Haskiri Velazquez and Mitchell Hoog.

READ MORE:

A ‘Saved By The Bell’ Reboot Is Coming To Television And It’s About….School Busing?

Lark Voorhies Feels ‘Hurt’ By Not Being In ‘Saved By The Bell’ Revival Series

Photo: Getty / NBCU

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