James Van Der Beek Says Being on The Masked Singer Made Him Forget About His Cancer for a Little Bit

James Van Der Beek has some singing skills!

The actor and dad of six was revealed to be the Griffin on the Wednesday, March 19, episode of The Masked Singer, and he says he enjoyed every minute of taping the show — although he admits he was a little nervous to do it.

“I had not sung in public in a very, very long time,” Van Der Beek, 48, tells PEOPLE. “It was something that I used to do when I was younger, but it was also something I didn’t have a ton of confidence in.”

Van Der Beek got his start in acting in theater as a kid — which was one of his early clues on The Masked Singer — but he never managed to land a role in a musical before he was cast in Dawson’s Creek in 1998, becoming an overnight teen idol.

“I would audition all the time for summer stock, and I’d go to open calls that I found in Backstage during my spring break in high school. That’s what I did. But I never really booked anything that way — I did one musical when I was 17, but I just kind of sang with the ensemble,” he says.

Last November, Van Der Beek revealed to PEOPLE that he was diagnosed with colon cancer. “I felt pretty good,” he says about doing the show while still staying on top of treatments.

“There were some things we had to look out for, and I told my dressers. But what was cool is, the audience didn’t know. So as much as I was dealing with whatever I was dealing with in my trailer and with the world, it was this great escape to be able to put on this mask and just connect with that audience and not have cancer be a part of it at all.”

As for any health updates, he says he’s “feeling good.”

“Right now I’m in a healing portal, so once I feel like it’s responsible and safe to really give any more details to that I will,” he says.

So now that he’s gone through The Masked Singer vocal coaching and conquered his nerves, is Broadway calling?

“I would love to do Broadway,” he says. “It would be a dream come true!”

Next for Van Der Beek is filming the sequel to Sidelined: The QB and Me, where he plays the father. He says it’s funny because the original film, released last year, is popular with his oldest daughter Olivia, 14, and her friends.

“It turned out to be a huge hit for Tubi,” he says. “They quote the movie at my daughter’s middle school, which is funny because her friends haven’t seen anything that I’d done — maybe Vamprina, because they watched it when they were 6. And then all of a sudden there are QB and Me memes and kids quoting it in her hallway. I was like, ‘This is great!’ ”

Van Der Beek and his wife Kimberly share Olivia, Joshua, 13, Annabell, 11, Emilia, 8, Gwendolyn, 6, and Jeremiah, 2.