Brandon Jay McLaren stepped into unfamiliar territory with his latest role as Travis, a widowed father with a teenage daughter, in the Netflix drama Firefly Lane.

“I think this is the first time I’ve had, like a grown child in a show,” McLaren tells ABC Audio. “I was like, ‘Oh, when did that happen?'”

Jokes aside, McLaren says he enjoyed being a part of the new series — which follows two women’s enduring friendship from their teen years through their 40s — because of the opportunity to work with actors he respected.

“It was fun because Sarah Chalke is so comedic. She’s such a comic genius,” he explains. “So I kind of got to play the straight man opposite her. Sort of like this…straight guy love interest. And it was just like a pleasure working opposite somebody like Sarah, who I was a huge fan of from Scrubs.”

Even with the opportunity to play “the good guy” and work with actors like Chalke and Katherine Heigl, McLaren quips that there were some drawbacks in doing a series set in the early 2000s.

“I struggled with my wardrobe fittings because all the clothes were so big. And and I was like, ‘Yo, did we dress like that in 2003?'” he says. “I was like, ‘Are you sure this is not like mid 90s?'”

“And then my head of wardrobe showed me a photo of I think it was David Beckham and Posh Spice at their wedding,” McLaren continues. “[Beckham] was like in some big suit. And I was like, ‘Oh yeah, that was the era.’ So that’s what I struggled with the most.”

“It wasn’t a good time for fashion,” he adds. 

Firefly Lane premieres on Netflix February 3.