After more than two decades in Hollywood, actor Randall Park has been through his fair share of auditions—but one of his earliest, for Nick Cannon’s Wild ‘N Out, was especially interesting.

“It was a process. They must’ve called me back like five or six times,” he said Monday on The Jennifer Hudson Show. “We had to play improv games. We had to, like, battle rap each other. And, like, essentially insult each other. And I didn’t even know these people, but I was just insulting them, and they were insulting me back. So you had to be able to take it.”

See the moment at about 1:58 in the video below.

Park said it was, appropriately, “wild.”

Park declined to battle rap with Hudson in his next appearance on her show. Still, he has fond memories of the comedy series that began airing on MTV in 2005.

“It was amazing. It was my first, kind of regular, semi-regular gig,” Park said. “So, you know, it was improv and it was with these great comedians. Katt Williams was in the cast when I was doing it. And he was amazing.”

Sign up for Entertainment Weekly‘s free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.

Park explained that he’s a “big fan” of rap and hip-hop.

“We’d have these musical guests come on, and it was just so surreal to see these people that, like, I loved, ya know, come on the show,” he said.

One of Park’s best-known roles is that of Marcus, his character in the 2019 rom-com Always Be My Maybe, in which he raps about punching none other than Keanu Reeves, because Reeves is dating the woman he loves, Sasha, played by Ali Wong.

“Originally, we didn’t even know we were going to do that song,” Park, a former member of a hip-hop group, told EW in June 2019. “We had a cut of the film, and it was during the post-production process that we decided to use that one line that ends the movie where Ali says, ‘Maybe you should write a song about punching him.’ That came from a batch of different lines we recorded to close out the movie, but we chose that one. So after we saw the cut, a Netflix executive suggested that we make the song.”

Park has since starred in Fresh Off the Boat, Veep, and Watson, as well as Marvel and DC movies. His latest project is Shonda Rhimes‘ new mystery comedy The Residence, which debuted this month on Netflix. The cast also includes Uzo Aduba, Giancarlo Esposito, Susan Kelechi Watson, Ken Marino, Jason Lee, and Bronson Pinchot.