David Hyde Pierce is opening up about his decision to skip out on the Frasier reboot, which premiered on Paramount+ earlier this year. According to the actor, he simply “wanted to do other things.”

Pierce, who was a series regular during the hit sitcom’s original run from 1993-2004, played Dr. Frasier Crane’s (Kelsey Grammer) younger brother, Niles Crane. While his role landed him four Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series during the show’s original run, he opted not to join Grammer in the revival.

“I never really wanted to go back,” he recently told The Los Angeles Times. “It’s not like I said, ‘Oh, I don’t ever want to do that again.’ I loved every moment. It was that I wanted to do other things.”

The actor explained to the outlet that he was busy with other career ventures when the opportunity for a Frasier reboot was first presented.

“When 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,” Pierce said. “I just thought, ‘I don’t want to be committed to a show and not be able to do stuff like this.'”

He continued, “And I also thought, ‘They don’t actually need me.’ 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 Pierce has been busy starring on Max‘s Julia — which is based on the life of chef Julia Child — the door is always open for him to come back to Frasier, according to his former onscreen brother, Grammer.

“I mean, we have Niles’ son on the show. It would be nice to have that happen,” Grammer previously told Variety. “We won’t force it; we’ll see what happens. We can certainly write to it. There’s arguably a lot of people in the world that have seen Frasier, and would really sort of celebrate seeing him again.”

In the meantime, you can stream all 10 episodes of the Frasier reboot on Paramount+.