"It's hard to feel cool when your pants come just below your nipples."
The cast of 11.22.63 learned some hard lessons about what it was like to live in the 1960s as they prepared for their roles, especially when it came to Josh Duhamel's costumes.
"I was excited about playing this dude who was this masculine, affable, lovable dude," Duhamel tells E! News of his character in Hulu's new time travel drama. "I was excited to feel what this guy feels, almost like I was going to be the Fonz or something, and then they gave me my pants..."
Duhamel joins James Franco, Sarah Gordon, Chris Cooper, and T.R. Knight in the series about a guy named Jake (Franco) who gets sent back in time to try to stop the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
In the video above, Duhamel, Franco, and Gordon describe what it took for them to step into the slick '60s world of the show.
"My character's not of that time, but he has to fit into that time," Franco says of Jake. "He becomes almost like an actor. He kinda does what we do normally, where we put on costumes and we assume different behaviors to make an audience believe we're of that time, and that's sort of what Jake is doing when he time travels."
For Gordon, time traveling meant a complicated dance routine...on her first day! Click play above to hear more.
The fashion, of course, was not the only important element of the new series. Real American history is also a huge part of the show and the Stephen King book the show is based on, and all of the actors found themselves a little bit in awe of recreating such an important and terrible event. It also helped that the show was partly filmed in Dealey Plaza, which is where the actual assassination took place.
"It's frozen in time," T.R. Knight tells us of the Dallas, TX location. "You're aware of what happened there, and to see the whole museum on the sixth floor and to see the buildings, and to see that it hasn't changed, that the only difference really is the style of cars that are driving around it...You were really aware of the affect that it had."
Click play on the videos above to hear more about how the cast prepared to go back in time!
11.22.63 premieres today on Hulu.