Jason Lewis resurfaced on Instagram on Wednesday with a beachside video, ending more than three years out of the public eye and telling followers it was time to come back into view. The 54-year-old actor said he had gone quiet, “not because I have nothing to say, but because I had something to do.”

In the clip, Lewis said he was still in it, but far enough along that it felt like the right moment to share what he had been doing. He also wrote in the caption, “After three years, it was time.”

That makes the video his first public appearance since late 2022, when he competed on Season 31 of “Dancing with the Stars” with Peta Murgatroyd. Lewis and Murgatroyd were the first couple eliminated from the competition, closing a short run that he later described as challenging and a little scary. He told one interviewer after the exit that it was an incredible group of people and that he had been very grateful to be part of it.

Lewis said he only joined the ABC competition after years of turning it down, finally agreeing because his fiancée, actress Liz Godwin, pushed him to be “a little less pigheaded and at least take a look at a show.” When he and Godwin watched an episode together, he said he was awestruck. “It is incredibly beautifully done. The dancers are so talented,” he said.

The timing of the Instagram post matters because Lewis had been out of the public eye for more than three years, and the beach video is the clearest sign yet that he is ready to reintroduce himself on his own terms. For a performer once closely associated with one of television’s most recognizable franchises, the silence had become part of the story.

Lewis is best known for playing Smith Jerrod, Samantha Jones’s young male model boyfriend, on “Sex and the City” from 2003 to 2004. He returned for the 2008 film and the 2010 sequel, but he was not asked back for the sequel series “And Just Like That.” Before that series premiered in 2021, Lewis joked that he would be “the last to know,” adding, “As much as I appreciate the flattery, the conversation is about the girls.” His last acting role was in the NBC supernatural series “Midnight, Texas” in 2018.

What Lewis is doing now remains the unanswered piece, and he did not spell it out in the video. But he made one point clear: he was not disappearing, only pausing, and after three years he says he has reached the point where it was time to resurface.