Dustin Diamond: 5 Things To Know About ’Saved By The Bell’s Screech Noticeably Absent From Reboot

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The gang’s all back for the ‘Saved By The Bell’ revival, except for Dustin Diamond’s Screech. We have five things to know about the former child star and where he is today.

Where Screech? As the newest Saved By The Bell revival trailer dropped on Oct. 27, fans went wild at the first glimpse of Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Tiffani Thiessen reprising their roles as Zack Morris and Kelly Kapowski. With Elizabeth Berkley’s Jessie and and Mario Lopez‘s A.C. Slater already aboard in starring roles, it made it all the more obvious that actor Dustin Diamond‘s iconic Samuel “Screech” Powers is not part of the revival at all.

Sadly, Dustin, 43, claims he wasn’t asked back for the NBC Peacock streaming service reboot. He told TMZ in Feb. 2020 that “Out of all the cast members, I was in…the most [episodes], and that’s not the case anymore if I’m not in the new one. And how do you have Saved by the Bell without Screech, right? We should all be a part of this.” We’ve got five things to know about Dustin.

1. Dustin has ideas of what Screech would be doing today in the reboot. Though he’s not part of the revival, the told TMZ in Feb. 2020 that “Screech should be dealing with parenthood and dealing with his kids, and finding out that…maybe he wasn’t a barrel full of roses to deal with growing up.” The show has not yet disclosed how they will be handling Screech’s noticeable absence while the remaining four primary characters have returned.

2. Dustin is currently living in Florida, while his Wisconsin home went into foreclosure. The former actor bought a home in Port Washington WI in 2003. He moved south to a place in Florida in Jan. 2019, and sadly his Wisconsin home later suffered a water main break, which destroyed 30 years of his memorabilia and collectables that he had stored in the basement. Dustin discovered in June 2020 that he had fallen far behind on the remaining $270K mortgage, and that Wells Fargo had asked a court to sign off on foreclosure. “Foreclosure means nothing when a house is destroyed…with my items I’ve lost, it now feels like Wells Fargo is trying to kick me when I’m down,” he told TMZ on June 28, 2020.

3. Dustin upset his former co-stars greatly with his 2009 book Behind the Bell. In the tell-all, Dustin claimed there was a much darker side to the popular early 90s teen series. He called out cast mate Tiffani for allegedly hooking up with both Mario and Mark, even though she had a boyfriend at the time. Dustin also claimed that his co-stars engaged in wild threesomes and there was drug use among the young stars. Dustin even humble-bragged that his stardom from the show helped him bed over 2,000 women. He later claimed the book was ghostwritten and that his stories were based on a short interview. The book was later turned into a 2014 Lifetime movie, The Unauthorized Saved by the Bell Story.

4. Dustin made a sex tape in 2006. When he was 29, Dustin directed and released his own sex tape, called Screeched – Saved by the Smell. He later told the OWN network’s Where Are They Now? in a 2013 interview that “The sex tape is the thing that I’m most embarrassed about.” He explained that he had heard Paris Hilton’s sex tape netted her $14 million, and figured he could make at least $1M with his own. “I definitely got some money off it, but it wasn’t worth what the fallout was,” he told the program.

5. Dustin has done jail time. In addition to his financial and home woes, Dustin spent three months in jail in early 2016 out of a 120 day sentence. It stemmed from him allegedly stabbing a man during a 2014 Christmas day bar fight in Ozaukee County, WI. He ended up back in jail briefly after he later violated his probation.