diff --git a/staging/src/k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/apis/meta/fuzzer/fuzzer.go b/staging/src/k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/apis/meta/fuzzer/fuzzer.go
index bb5e8a2712d..6bc1356ed46 100644
--- a/staging/src/k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/apis/meta/fuzzer/fuzzer.go
+++ b/staging/src/k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/apis/meta/fuzzer/fuzzer.go
@@ -186,15 +186,17 @@ func v1FuzzerFuncs(codecs runtimeserializer.CodecFactory) []interface{} {
 			j.ResourceVersion = strconv.FormatUint(c.RandUint64(), 10)
 			j.UID = types.UID(c.RandString())
 
-			var sec, nsec int64
+			// Fuzzing sec and nsec in a smaller range (uint32 instead of int64),
+			// so that the result Unix time is a valid date and can be parsed into RFC3339 format.
+			var sec, nsec uint32
 			c.Fuzz(&sec)
 			c.Fuzz(&nsec)
-			j.CreationTimestamp = metav1.Unix(sec, nsec).Rfc3339Copy()
+			j.CreationTimestamp = metav1.Unix(int64(sec), int64(nsec)).Rfc3339Copy()
 
 			if j.DeletionTimestamp != nil {
 				c.Fuzz(&sec)
 				c.Fuzz(&nsec)
-				t := metav1.Unix(sec, nsec).Rfc3339Copy()
+				t := metav1.Unix(int64(sec), int64(nsec)).Rfc3339Copy()
 				j.DeletionTimestamp = &t
 			}
 
diff --git a/staging/src/k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/apis/meta/v1/unstructured/unstructured_test.go b/staging/src/k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/apis/meta/v1/unstructured/unstructured_test.go
index fe981137653..7ee74a3eed0 100644
--- a/staging/src/k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/apis/meta/v1/unstructured/unstructured_test.go
+++ b/staging/src/k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/apis/meta/v1/unstructured/unstructured_test.go
@@ -64,15 +64,6 @@ func TestUnstructuredMetadataRoundTrip(t *testing.T) {
 		}
 		setObjectMetaUsingAccessors(u, uCopy)
 
-		// TODO: remove this special casing when creationTimestamp becomes a pointer.
-		// Right now, creationTimestamp is a struct (metav1.Time) so omitempty holds no meaning for it.
-		// However, the current behaviour is to remove the field if it holds an empty struct.
-		// This special casing exists here because custom marshallers for metav1.Time marshal
-		// an empty value to "null", which gets converted to nil when converting to an unstructured map by "ToUnstructured".
-		if err := unstructured.SetNestedField(uCopy.UnstructuredContent(), nil, "metadata", "creationTimestamp"); err != nil {
-			t.Fatalf("unexpected error setting creationTimestamp as nil: %v", err)
-		}
-
 		if !equality.Semantic.DeepEqual(u, uCopy) {
 			t.Errorf("diff: %v", diff.ObjectReflectDiff(u, uCopy))
 		}