We’ve all heard money can’t buy happiness. But Rainn Wilson wanted more before making that call.
If you’re a fan of the zany actor, you probably love his most well-known role: Dwight Schrute. For nine seasons, Rainn played the rule-following, beet-farming, Battlestar Galactica-loving Dunder Mifflin paper salesman on The Office. As one of the most beloved television series in recent history, you’d think any actor involved would have been over the moon about their success… But Rainn is now admitting that for him, it was “never enough.”
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In a Club Random interview with Bill Maher uploaded Sunday, the 57-year-old admitted to actually feeling “mostly unhappy” while shooting the universally loved show:
“When I was in The Office, I spent several years really, mostly unhappy because it wasn’t enough.”
DAMN. What exactly wasn’t enough?? Starring on one of the most celebrated shows of all time? He continued:
“This is what I’m looking at now, and realizing now, like, ‘I’m on a hit show, Emmy-nominated every year, making lots of money, working with, like, 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, and I wasn’t enjoying it.”
With so many things to be grateful for, why wasn’t it all enough? Well, Rainn wanted more. The Seattle native explained:
“I was thinking about, ‘Why am I not a movie star? Why am I not the next Jack Black, or the next Will Ferrell, and how come I can’t have a movie career, and why don’t I have this development deal?’”
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That just goes to show you right there that even with all the money and fame someone like Rainn brought in, it’s still possible to not feel good enough. We’re sure it was even harder for him as Steve Carell, who memorably played Michael Scott, was carving out a lucrative career for himself outside of The Office with hits like The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Despicable Me, Crazy, Stupid, Love, and more. He added:
“When I was on The Office, I was clutching and grasping at, okay, I was making hundreds of thousands — I wanted millions. I was a TV star, but I wanted to be a movie star. It was never enough.”
And it never would have been. If you just look at what others have, someone will always have more. That hole will never be filled. You have to learn to look at what you have, to see how lucky you are.
It’s certainly wild to think that one of the leads on the show was not enjoying being on it… especially because he was SO good as Dwight. But it sounds like he’s had a lot of time to reflect on it all, and to realize that he should have been more in the moment. Hopefully now he takes a bit more pride in everything the show accomplished! Watch his full interview (below):
What do YOU think of his comments, Perezcious readers? Let us know down below!
[Images via NBC/YouTube & Jaime Espinoza/WENN]