Check out photos of actor named 2024 Sexiest Man Alive

John Krasinski wasn’t exactly sure what to think when he got word that he was being crowned PEOPLE’s 2024 Sexiest Man Alive.

“Just immediate blackout, actually. Zero thoughts,” he tells the magazine in this week’s cover story. “Other than maybe I’m being punked. That’s not how I wake up, thinking, ‘Is this the day that I’ll be asked to be Sexiest Man Alive?’ And yet it was the day you guys did it. You’ve really raised the bar for me.”

While fans might know Krasinski as a crush-worthy, prank-loving paper salesman, an intense former Marine turned CIA agent, or a devoted family man sacrificing himself for love, the actor, 45, prefers just being a husband and father, who binges Netflix documentaries and relishes bedtime stories with his kids.

Now living in Brooklyn with his wife of 14 years, actress Emily Blunt, 41, and their daughters Hazel, 10, and Violet, 8, Krasinski says Blunt was “very excited” when she heard the big news: “There was a lot of joy involved in me telling her.”

The actress has even joked that she would wallpaper their house with the cover if her husband received the crown. “Do we have that on camera? Because that’s like a binding contract, I think,” he says. “My children will love that; it won’t be weird at all.”

Beloved for his nine-year run as Jim Halpert on the hit series The Office, Krasinski cowrote, directed, and starred alongside Blunt in the 2018 thriller A Quiet Place. Its massive success spawned two sequels, while Krasinski, who got ripped for Michael Bay’s 13 Hours, stayed in fighting shape to play the titular Jack Ryan for four seasons on the popular Prime Video series, now set to become a film.