“I’m so gratified,” the actor said of the role he eventually played on the album.

The Weeknd‘s Dawn FM would be incomplete — and unfathomable — without Jim Carrey‘s presence on the record, but according to the actor-comedian, he initially declined the opportunity to appear on the singer’s latest album.

Speaking with Entertainment Tonight in an interview published Monday (Aug. 8), Carrey explained how his involvement on the LP came to be.

“The Mask was the very first movie [The Weeknd] ever saw and kind of inspired him to want to be in this thing,” Carrey said. “And boy, did he ever get in this thing in a big way … He put it to me that he was doing this thing that was the radio station in purgatory, and I didn’t want to work and I was like, ‘I love you, but I don’t want to do any work.’”

Eventually, Carrey could not resist The Weeknd’s request, and even started coming up with lines during times where he should have been getting rest.

“Then I started waking up in the middle of the night — which is what happens with me, I play in the middle of the night — and I start spitting bars, of all things, for god’s sake,” he explained. “It was really funny because I fully left it to him … I said to him, ‘Use nothing at all or use a line here and there, if you want to, but I don’t have to be in it, whatever.’ He said, ‘No it’s fire, you gotta do this,’ and gave me a really beautiful place on the album, so I’m so gratified.”

In the time since Carrey worked with The Weeknd on the record, Dawn FM hit No. 2 on the Billboard 200, where it charted for a total of 30 weeks. Carrey also appeared as the doctor who placed a mask on The Weeknd in the singer’s music video for “Out of Time.”

“He’s an incredible guy,” Carrey added. “An incredible artist and a lovely person, and I feel very lucky to be his friend.”