While he will forever be remembered for playing Niles Crane, Frasier Crane’s persnickety psychiatrist brother on Frasier — which earned him four Emmy Awards — David Hyde Pierce was one of the original show’s main cast members not to jump onto the Paramount+ reboot.

In a new interview with The Los Angeles Times, Pierce explains that while he “loved every moment” of the original NBC hit, he “never really wanted to go back.”

“It’s not like I said, ‘Oh, I don’t ever want to do that again,'” Pierce explains, allowing how much he loved his time on the show.

“It was that I wanted to do other things,” insists the star of Max’s Julia, about famed TV chef Julia Child.

He continues, “[W]hen we got into real talks about the reboot, I had just started on the Julia TV show and was working on a musical and going to do another musical … And I just thought, ‘I don’t want to be committed to a show and not be able to do stuff like this.'”

“I also thought, ‘They don’t actually need me,'” he adds, explaining of his TV brother, played by Kelsey Grammer, “Frasier has moved on to a new world. They have new characters. And I think I’m right. It’s doing great. And the new people they have are great.”

While nothing has been officially announced about a second season of Grammer’s new show, he recently told The Hollywood Reporter, “I believe we have a home at Paramount+ for several years to come, and we certainly have several ideas for it.”

Meanwhile, Pierce is back on the stage in New York City, in Stephen Sondheim and David Ive‘s musical Here We Are.

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