Younger 's Nico Tortorella Explains the Meaning Behind His Naughty New Tattoo

Mike Coppola/Getty

Update: In May 2018, Nico Tortorella announced that they are gender fluid and use they/them pronouns. This content was written in January 2016, before they publicly announced their gender identity.

Nico Tortorella plays a tattoo artist on Younger, and he’s all inked up in real life, too.

“I’m always getting new tattoos,” he told PEOPLE on Tuesday night at the Younger and Teachers premiere party at the NoMad Hotel in New York City. “I probably need to stop at some point.”

His latest? On his arm, a mother lion picking up her cub in honor of his mom, who proudly walked the red carpet as her son’s date at the TV Land bash. And then there’s the slightly naughtier addition – “right above my junk,” as he put it, laughing – of his name written in script three times that has his Instagram followers drooling over nearly naked mirror selfies.

“Nico Nico Nico is this idea of a concept brand art project that I came up with early in the year,” the 27-year-old explained. “I got the tattoo, my brother and I started working on this film that kind of documented my life in a really art pop-y way. It’s all part of it. We filmed me getting the tattoo. You’ll hear more when it comes out later this year. Nico Nico Nico, stay tuned.”

Sigh.

But back to the show. During Wednesday night’s season 2 premiere, Tortorella’s character Josh had a hilarious texting misunderstanding with girlfriend Liza (Sutton Foster) – who he recently discovered is really 40 years old. (They’re cool, by the way.)

“I hate punctuation, which apparently Josh does too, and I always write everything in lowercase,” he said. “I’ll go back and erase something if it’s in uppercase, just the way it looks I feel like it’s cleaner if it’s all lowercase. So I totally understand that, but that can definitely get you into trouble.”

The script’s rapid-fire references to millennial technology and hip Brooklyn culture are what keep the dialogue so fresh, but Tortorella admitted even he has to look some words up – just don’t tell his costars.

“I seem to always be the one that people come to when they don’t know something,” he said with a laugh. “Yeah, I’m like the Urban Dictionary of Younger.”

Younger airs Wednesday at 10 p.m. ET on TV Land.