David Hyde Pierce just didn’t feel like doing more Frasier, alright?

Against all odds, Paramount+’s Frasier reboot is apparently pretty good (we’ll get around to it someday), but even with Kelsey Grammer’s salad-tossing and egg-scrambling Dr. Crane living in a new town with some young new friends, there’s still a little sting from the lack of David Hyde Pierce’s Niles Crane—a presence so crucial to the original series that Pierce made a meta cameo on The Simpsons as the brother of Grammer’s Sideshow Bob. And now, while promoting his role in the Stephen Sondheim/David Ives musical Here We Are, Pierce has opened up a bit about not appearing in the new Frasier.

Speaking with the LA Times, Pierce revealed that there’s no shocking secret behind his decision not to join the show (which could’ve featured him and his brother running a theater together, but that storyline was scrapped), it’s just that he had already done Frasier and didn’t really feel like doing any more. Plus, he’s been working on Max’s Julia show and is doing a bunch of musicals, which he wouldn’t have had time for if he were committing to another sitcom, so he just decided to let them make the new Frasier without him.

Luckily, it seems to have worked out well, since the show is apparently pretty good (we’re putting it on our Paramount+ queue right now), with Pierce noting that “they don’t actually need me,” since Frasier has “moved on to a new world” and they have “new characters” who “are great.” That makes it sound like he’s both seen the new show and enjoys it, or at least that he’s aware of it and has no beef with it. But it also doesn’t sound like he has much interest in someday stopping by for a cameo or a guest appearance so he can trade new snide little barbs with his brother and his brother’s new friends. Oh well.