Rainn Wilson spent years "mostly unhappy" on The Office because he wanted to be a bigger star

Rainn Wilson’s post-Office career has been about chasing enlightenment, and even more so, happiness. But he didn’t always have that spiritual mindset: in the early days of his fame, he was apparently mostly concerned about getting more fame. This comes from an appearance on Bill Maher’s Club Random podcast, in which Wilson admits being on a megahit NBC sitcom didn’t feel like “enough.”

“When I was in The Office, I spent several years really mostly unhappy because it wasn’t enough. I’m realizing now, like, I’m on a hit show, Emmy nominated every year, making lots of money, working with Steve Carell and Jenna Fischer and John Krasinski and these amazing writers and incredible directors like Paul Feig. I’m on one of the great TV shows. People love it. I wasn’t enjoying it,” he shares. “I was thinking about, ‘Why am I not a movie star? Why am I not the next Jack Black or the next Will Ferrell? How come I can’t have a movie career? Why don’t I have this development deal?’”

During The Office heyday, Wilson had starring roles in films like The Rocker and Super, but his film career certainly didn’t reach Jack Black levels. “When I was on The Office, I was clutching and grasping at, okay, I was making hundreds of thousands. I wanted millions, and I was a TV star, but I wanted to be a movie star,” he says now. “It was never enough. Humans have lived for hundreds of thousands of years, and ‘never enough’ has helped us as a species.”

Speaking recently at the Aspen Ideas Festival (via Today), Wilson admitted he didn’t get into acting to “bestow upon the little people some laughter to enliven their meaningless, petty little lives.” His goal on The Office, he said, was to “buy a house.”

Yet Wilson’s spiritual journey has made him more appreciative of The Office as a whole. Promoting his book Soul Boom, the actor said “The Office writers have been so inspiring” to his own writing. “There was just so much brilliance everywhere,” he told The A.V. Club earlier this year. “It was a rich creative petri dish to play in, and I’m sure that rubbed off in some way shape and form.”