Tahj Mowry is showing a whole new side of himself with his new movie, Welcome Matt, and spilling new details about reviving the classic sitcom that put him on the map, Smart Guy.

The 35-year-old actor stars as Matt, a writer-director who, after a traumatic incident, suffers from agoraphobia, the fear of stepping outside. As Mowry tells ET’s Deidre Behar, the film has a “great balance of comedy and drama.”

“Matthew Hillard is a writer-director who gains a little bit of fame and recognition from a movie he did called Life’s A Beach. So in the process of gearing up for his next film, there’s a lot of pressure on him to sort of meet the expectations that the first film met,” Mowry details. “He goes through a very traumatic experience and we find out what that experience is in the film. It sort of derails him completely.”

“It’s really funny, but it’s also pretty intense at times. So I think it’s got a great balance of the comedy and the drama,” he notes. “That’s one of the reasons I wanted to do the role because, A, what it’s speaking [about] and what it’s bringing awareness to. But also it’s a chance for people who may know me already to see me in a different light.”