It's back to Bayside High School for the Saved by the Bell gang!
Series alums Elizabeth Berkley, Mario Lopez and Mark-Paul Gosselaar reunited Saturday at 90s Con in Hartford, Connecticut, to look back on their time on the beloved series. While together, the trio shared some interesting revelations tied to the show — including what Berkley, 48, would have worn if she 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, also reminisced on the good ole days, especially their hair choices from back then.
"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."
Saved by the Bell aired for four seasons on NBC between 1989 to 1993. It launched as a retooled version of the Disney Channel series Good Morning, Miss Bliss, and starred Gosselaar, Lark Voorhies, Dustin Diamond, Dennis Haskins and Hayley Mills. Aside from Mills, they all joined the NBC series, which eventually spun off into Saved by the Bell: The New Class.
A two-season-long reboot, titled Saved by the Bell, aired on Peacock from 2020 through 2021. Lopez, Gosselaar, Berkley, Thiessen and Voorhies all reprised their roles in the series.
Much of the cast has remained close since the original series concluded in 1993. Lopez, Gosselaar, Berkley and Thiessen reunited for dinner in 2019 alongside some of their spouses.
"This is what 30+ years of friendship looks like," Gosselaar captioned the group shot.
Even though there was strain amongst the cast with Diamond, the stars all shared emotional tributes when he died in February 2021 of cancer.
"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."
90s Con, organized by That's 4 Entertainment, is taking place in Hartford, Connecticut, through Sunday.