James Lafferty Talks Working with Wife Alexandra Park and Stephen Colletti on New Show: 'Instant Chemistry' (Exclusive)

The "One Tree Hill" alumnus says being able to work with people he knows so well on "Everyone Is Doing Great" is the show's "greatest strength"

While some might say never to mix business and friendships, for James Lafferty, it’s actually been the secret sauce on his recent creative venture.

Back in 2018, Lafferty, 38, collaborated with fellow One Tree Hill alumnus Stephen Colletti to write, produce and act in a new show called Everyone Is Doing Great which chronicles the lives of actors, Seth Steward (Colletti) and Jeremy Davis (Lafferty), who have very similar histories the actors who play them.

“It's a comedy about the cast of a teen drama starting their lives over in the shadow of their early success,” Lafferty explains to PEOPLE. “It’s rooted in friendship and love and nostalgia.”

Another special addition to the cast? Lafferty’s wife, Alexandra Park, who plays Andrea — an actress who also starred alongside Seth and Jeremy on the fictional show Eternal.

For Lafferty, being able to collaborate with people who are so close in his personal life is the show’s “greatest strength.”

Related: James Lafferty Was Ready to Walk Away from Acting Before Booking One Tree Hill: ‘My Last Shot’ (Exclusive)

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“We are so lucky to have it, and we know how lucky we are so we do everything we can to continue to foster that working relationship,” he tells PEOPLE of the group’s ability to work together. “I think it's always important that you have to put your friendship first no matter what. And once you have that first principle, I think things really fall into place there.”

“Honestly, it affords our show a level of authenticity that I think is so rare in any project because it's instant chemistry and there's a shorthand and there's nonverbal understanding between all of us within scenes — you can't cast that,” he continues. “And that comes with built-in relationships. So I think it is really wonderful from a personal perspective, but I also think it's the greatest strength of the show.”

Related: The Cast of 'One Tree Hill': Where Are They Now?

While season 1 is now available to purchase on Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video, season 2 is also complete and the team is on the search for the show’s “streaming home.”

“I just can't wait for the world to see it,” Lafferty says of the upcoming season, which he says is “building on what we established in season 1.”

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“We were really fortunate this time around to have more time with Alexandra Park and Cariba Heine and build those characters out. So now it's a really balanced four-hander between the women and the men in the show — the four leads,” he explains. “And I think broad strokes, if the first season was about the guys kind of spiraling and digging holes for themselves and the girls being in a really good place and having it figured out, this season we're going to turn things on their head a little bit and we're going to flip that dynamic. And all of them will be going through quarter-life crises of their own.”

Lafferty says he believes that by the end of the summer, they'll know "where the show is going to land" as far as a streamer.

Lafferty and Park wed in May 2022 in Hawaii with none other than Colletti by their side as one of Lafferty’s groomsmen.

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