It will be four years on May 16, 2023 since the very final episode of The Big Bang Theory aired on CBS. Main actor Jim Parsons was at the center of the decision to bring an end to the Chuck Lorre sitcom after 12 seasons and more than a decade on TV. This was because he decided not to renew his contract for a 13th season, and the producers consequently chose not to move forward with the story sans one of their most important characters.

Despite being the primary reason for the cancelation of the beloved show, Parsons has no qualms whatsoever about how creator Lorre and his team decided to wrap up the story. He revealed these sentiments in a recent interview about the series finale, where he said: "I'm deeply satisfied with how it ended."

In the time since then, Parsons has gone about redefining his career. He has continued working as an actor in a few roles, including in the Netflix series Hollywood by Ryan Murphy, as well as the films Spoiler Alert and The Boys in the Band, the latter also produced by Murphy.

Parsons appears to have started to lean more towards behind the scenes work in movies and TV shows, however. Most notably, he has functioned as an executive producer on Call Me Kat with his former Big Bang colleague Mayim Bialik. He has also served a similar role in Young Sheldon.

Jim Parsons Left LA As Soon As The Big Bang Theory Ended

Jim Parsons was born and raised in Houston, Texas. At the age of 26, he relocated to San Diego and enrolled for a graduate course in classical theater at the University of San Diego. He wrapped up his education there within two years, and moved to New York to further his career in 2001.

His success in Hollywood saw Parsons move once again, this time to Los Angeles. He even started putting down roots in the City of Angels, as he purchased a multi-million dollar mansion in 2014. This would have been at the height of the success of The Big Bang Theory, and the actor might not have been thinking too far into the future.

By the time the show was coming to an end, however, Parsons had seemingly had enough of LA. "We did our final performance on a Tuesday night," he said. "On Wednesday, we did the hand prints and stuff at Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Thursday morning, I was on a plane out of LA."

Jim Parsons Never Planned To Transition To Work Behind The Scenes

Jim Parsons made his comments while speaking to The Hollywood Reporter back in December 2022. In the interview, he also spoke about how he found himself moving beyond the work he was used to as an actor, into the unfamiliar waters of directing and producing.

"I was not well versed enough in Hollywood machinations to know that, at some point during Big Bang re-negotiations, this would be a thing — that part of one new deal was my own production company," Parsons explained. "For what? I'd only been an actor. I looked at it as a gift, but I remember saying at the time that I didn't want to develop work for me. I didn't want to be another actor with a vanity project production company."

One of the earlier projects that Parsons and his small production company took on was a movie titled A Kid Called Jake. While the film received praise from critics, the actor revealed that he thought producing was the headache he had previously imagined it to be.

Is Jim Parsons Retiring From Television Acting?

Among other things, Jim Parsons also discussed what it was like to work with Chuck Lorre in The Big Bang Theory. "With Chuck, I was always impressed with how rhythmically gifted he is," he said. "He brings a lot of things to the work he does, but so much of the success of his sitcoms is that he understands how to keep them moving along musically. They play like a good pop song. They're worth repeating, and you can dance to them."

Despite this, Parsons insisted that playing Sheldon Cooper in Big Bang had been such a gratifying experience, that he was not interested in another role like it. "It was a wonderful ride and I never disliked a day of it," he added in the same THR interview. "But what my spirit has been craving is new people, new experiences."

One of the things that Parsons appears to be interested in is more film work. In fact, he name-checked directors Mike Mills (20th Century Women) and Paul Thomas Anderson (Phantom Thread, Licorice Pizza) as two people he was particularly keen to partner with in any upcoming projects.