He passed away earlier this year.

The Saved By The Bell reboot is set to pay a tribute to the late star Dustin Diamond in the upcoming series. Producers have said that a special tribute will be made to the actor who played Samuel "Screech" Powers on the original show and the spin-off series. Diamond passed away in February of this year at the age of 44 after being diagnosed with lung cancer only a month before. Diamond didn't make an appearance in the first season of the reboot alongside the rest of the original cast but there were talks of him making an appearance in the upcoming second season. Executive producer Tracey Wigfield told Variety that original cast members such as Elizabeth Berkley Lauren and Mario Lopez thought it was important to have a tribute to the actor on the series. She said: "It would have been wrong to not acknowledge that in a real way and to not have our OG characters mourning this character that we’ll never get to see again. "That, I wanted to put on the screen, but I just wanted to make sure we were being as sensitive as possible. There was a real guy who had people who loved him. You don’t want to make any jokes or talk about it in any way that might hurt anyone’s feelings." For the tribute, the original cast members are set to reunite at their favourite hang out spot The Max to remember their old friend. Showing clips from the original series, Wigfield added that they have carefully chosen what footage to use as Screech was known for "being the butt of a joke or being an outrageous character and what we were hoping for was using the clips to show how important he was to the show, but also to the other characters in the show." Screech was the nerdy sidekick of the series that ran from 1989 to 1993, and Diamond reprised the role in the spin-off series' Saved By The Bell: The New Class and Saved By The Bell: The College Years.