Jim Parsons says being Sheldon made him just as miserable as the rest of us

To be clear, Parsons lays his miseries entirely at his own feet, noting that his unhappiness as the show’s best-known character—in addition to the usual issues afflicting any young actor who suddenly becomes one of the most famous people on the planet practically overnight—stemmed from his own perfectionism and tendency to overwork. Suggesting it went beyond a work ethic or discipline, and “was kind of OCD in nature,” Parsons told podcaster Jon Dean that his “self-tortured” attitude is baked into his memories of the show, and that “I had a list of things basically in my head that I had to get done in order to be comfortable and know that I could do my job right, which I don’t think was true… It was really just obsessive behavior basically.”

Along with Johnny Galecki and Kaley Cuoco, Parsons became one of the highest-paid people on TV during Big Bang Theory‘s 12-season run, eventually making $1 million per episode in its last several seasons. (The show’s original cast did notably took a pay cut for its final two years on the air, though, so that production could raise the salaries of Mayim Bialik and Melissa Rauch to something closer to parity.) Parsons now says “I look back now and realize that there were many ways, at some of the best moments of my life, I was miserable. I wasn’t happy. I was stressed,” adding that he feels he missed “tons of life.”

The franchise, meanwhile, has been pretty happy to truck along without him: Although he served as an executive producer and narrator on Young Sheldon (reprising the role of an older Sheldon Cooper in its finale, opposite Bialik), Parsons has no credits on that show’s own spin-off, Georgie And Mandy’s First Marriage. He also isn’t expected to reprise the Sheldon role for HBO Max’s incredibly weird drive to make a Sliders for the franchise, courtesy of next week’s Stuart Fails To Save The Universe.