Elizabeth Berkley on 'Saved by the Bell' season 2 and paying tribute to Dustin Diamond

Elizabeth Berkley, one of the stars and producers of Saved by the Bell, talks to Yahoo Entertainment about season two and how the cast pays tribute to the late Dustin Diamond. Season two debuts on Peacock on November 24.

Video Transcript

- Everybody knows I'm getting a divorce.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

- Fate is real. You're working at the same school as your first love.

ELIZABETH BERKLEY: As always, Bayside is never boring. Everyone's up to their usual hijinks and fun. Tracey Wigfield is at the helm. We have incredible writers. There's no one dimensional character here and it's such a joy. Here, we get to really get juicy this season. For Jessie Spano, she is navigating a divorce. Her life is messy and for someone who is type A and usually is the illusion of being in control, in Jessie's case she's trying to help her son navigate a divorce while she's working at the very school where he is.

So she's overprotective while Jessie's also rediscovering herself again. She got married 20 years ago and the marriage has not been great for a long time, and so she's finding her sense of self. Season one was so much about the introduction for a new kid so that we could really get invested and go on their journey. And now that people are in love with them and we pick back up with everyone, we can really dive deeper into the OG cast members.

- Sorry I'm late. I was developing pictures in my darkroom.

- They're for "Robot Illustrated." I'm hunk of the month.

- I see you've met my robot, Kevin.

- Screech, he's just like you.

- It's 'cause I programmed him.

- That's what he thinks.

ELIZABETH BERKLEY: Obviously, tragic to have lost Dustin. He was way too young and had so much talent. And we had hoped, actually there were some talks with our executive producers, about integrating him in some creative and fun ways for season two.

- Screech is so lucky he and Kevin get to live on the International Space Station so he doesn't have to deal with all this.

ELIZABETH BERKLEY: It was imperative that we treat it in a delicate manner. Tracey and the writers came up with a really sensitive tribute and I hope that fans really love it. It was tender and really moving to be in the Max, just the five of us, you know, you could really-- it was palpable. You could feel that something was obviously missing from this perfect puzzle. It was definitely a way to honor Dustin and the legacy of his craft in creating such an iconic character as Screech that no one else could have done.

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- OK, you can try now. You ready?

- Yeah.

- Try it now.

ELIZABETH BERKLEY: It came about because the brilliance of Tracey and our writer Yamara Taylor. They both approached me I guess while they were breaking different stories, which means kind of brainstorming how the season's going to go prior to filming. And as a producer myself on the show, you know, there was a lot of respect and curiosity to see would I want to go for something like this. And Tracey approached it with that kind of sensitivity and like I said, respect.

And she said, "Listen, we have this idea. I have no idea where you stand on this, how do you feel about it. Would you be willing to check out a few pages that we have to see if you'd like to do this?" And I had always thought that it would be fun to really embrace some humor around it, which can be so healing. To do something maybe on SNL, a skit, and maybe I still will down the road, you never know.

But what they approached me with was so genius and meta and so many things that I don't want to say because it'll blow the surprise of how they did it, but it was so incredible. To be Jessie, these two iconic kind of pop culture characters that I've been lucky enough to play, and to have Jessie need Nomi, and Nomi needs Jessie to be whole. You got to check it out. That's all I'm going to say.

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