Elisha Cuthbert cut her small-screen teeth on serious drama–playing the ever-in-danger daughter of Jack Bauer on Fox’s hit 24–but now that she’s headed back to television, she’s doing something a little different, and she admits she was terrified at first.

Cuthbert stars in NBC’s One Big Happy, a sitcom about a gay woman who decides to have a baby with her straight best friend. The show is executive produced by Ellen DeGeneres, who certainly knows her way around the funny, and Cuthbert says that despite the trepidation that came with starting something new, she trusts in DeGeneres.

“I was just so over-the-moon excited that Ellen DeGeneres and Liz Feldman would consider me to play Lizzy. I mean, they are two very influential lesbians and I was just kind of shocked and ecstatic that they thought I was right for it, and that they thought I was funny and that I could do this part properly and give it some sort of justice. It was fantastic….I do have to tell you I was terrified of doing a sitcom, ironically, not of anything else. It’s out of my wheelhouse, I’d never done one before,” Cuthbert said.

Cuthbert made headlines earlier this year when Canada-based sports network TSN aired a tweet from a hockey fan accusing Cuthbert–who is married to Toronto Maple Leafs captain Dion Phaneuf–of having an affair with one of his teammates. The network quickly apologized to the actress after she and Phaneuf threatened a lawsuit.

“In spite of TSN’s protocols to prevent unfounded and inappropriate tweets from making it to air, a false, and inappropriate tweet was allowed to run. There was no basis for the false allegation made in this tweet. TSN unreservedly apologizes to Joffrey Lupul, Dion Phaneuf and Elisha Cuthbert and regrets any embarrassment this unfortunate incident has caused to them,” said TSN host James Duthie.