\u201cNaked Gun,\u201d<\/a> which is super fun, too. I thought the funnier thing \u2014 what I did \u2014 was to do it. That\u2019s a joke on a cosmic scale. I\u2019m literally pranking the universe. I am, right? That\u2019s the big joke. Now, what do I do with it? That\u2019s the question.<\/p>\nAP: With the \u201cNobody\u201d movies and your recent Broadway experience, you\u2019ve set a high bar for surprising people with what you\u2019re capable of.<\/h2>\n
ODENKIRK: I thought about the character of Saul. He never quits. He gets pushed around. He\u2019s clever. He\u2019s in a spot and he has to think of a way out. That\u2019s an action character. While it\u2019s true that it feels like, \u201cOh, boy, you went so far away.\u201d I didn\u2019t really go that far away. It\u2019s one step. It\u2019s a big step. Everything else is in Saul. I did think that for people who know my comedy, this is going to be a hard sell. But that\u2019s not that many people. That\u2019s a cult group.<\/p>\n
AP: And it might not be that hard of a sell to your comedy fans, either. The lie detector \u201cMr. Show\u201d sketch, in which you calmly confess to outlandish things, has a similar what\u2019s-under-the-surface quality like the \u201cNobody\u201d movies.<\/h2>\n
ODENKIRK: (Laughs) Yeah, yes.<\/p>\n
AP: Maybe the most relevant sketch, though, is the one where you and David Cross playtough guys who bump into each other in a bar and then remained locked in mutual animosity through their lives, even through marriage. \u201cNobody 2\u201d kicks off with a similar encounter.<\/h2>\n
ODENKIRK: It\u2019s a tap on the shoulder that sets this whole thing off. He agrees to leave. Then this little tap happens. Then he leaves. He\u2019s outside. He can keep walking, which is what you would do. You\u2019d get home and tell your wife, \u201cThat guy tapped her on the back of the head.\u201d It would just sit with you forever. The whole thing could have been avoided if it wasn\u2019t for who Hutch is, which is a person who allows himself to go crazy.<\/p>\n
AP: Allowing yourself to go crazy isn\u2019t a radically different impulse in comedy. Did you always feel like rage or anger was fueling some of the funniest things you did?<\/h2>\n
ODENKIRK: For sure. I remember sitting with David Cross in the morning. We would start our time at \u201cMr. Show\u201d trying to generate ideas, sitting around with the paper. Oftentimes, it was: \u201cThis really pisses me off,\u201d or \u201cLook at this stupid thing.\u201d So, yeah, frustration, anger, those are the very raw materials of comedy.<\/p>\n
AP: You’re just funneling that rage into a different place.<\/h2>\n
ODENKIRK: Life conjures up this rage in you, but there is no place that deserves it. In the first film, the first place he goes to exact revenge, he realizes all these people have nothing, they don\u2019t deserve it. In the second film, he goes after this guy and he\u2019s like, \u201cI\u2019m under her thumb.\u201d It\u2019s really not something you\u2019re supposed to do in an action movie, and I love that. You don\u2019t just get to find a bad guy around the corner. You\u2019ve got to go looking.<\/p>\n
AP: You’ve said you’d like to do a third one that ends with Hutch having nothing.<\/h2>\n
ODENKIRK: Yeah, the moral would be that everything he loves is gone. He burned everything he loved. We let him get away with it because the movie is an entertainment and it\u2019s meant to tell you: Yes, you can let go of your rage in this magical world. But in the end, I would think that it\u2019s an addiction. And he does want to do it. He does want to have a go, and so does every guy. That\u2019s why we have movies. And that\u2019s why we have boxing matches.<\/p>\n
AP: How much credit do you give these movies for saving your life? After you had a heart attack in 2021 on the set of \u201cBetter Call Saul,\u201d you attributed your narrow survival to your \u201cNobody\u201d training.<\/h2>\n
ODENKIRK: When I had my EKG, where you can see the heart, the doctor explained that I had almost no scarring from that incident. And that\u2019s kind of weird because of how long that incident went on and how drastic it was. They were like: \u201cThis should all be scar tissue, and there\u2019s none.\u201d They said that\u2019s because these other veins are bigger than we\u2019re used to seeing, and that\u2019s from all the exercise you\u2019ve been doing. And, dude, I did a lot. I went from a comedy writer who exercised just by riding a bike three or four times a week to the action I did in those movies.<\/p>\n
AP: You told Marc Maron you saw no white light and tongue-in-cheek advised him to \u201cgo for the money.\u201d<\/h2>\n
ODENKIRK: Well, I got nothing. Nothing. I did talk to my family the next day. I woke up the next day around 1:30 and talked to my wife and kids. I was talking to people for the next week, and I don\u2019t remember any of it, or the day that it happened.<\/p>\n
AP: But did the experience change you?<\/h2>\n
ODENKIRK: (Long pause) It\u2019s a big component of my thinking about who I am and what I want to do with myself and my time. The thing that\u2019s driven me the most in my life is a sense of responsibility. Not just like, \u201cOh, I have kids. I have to make money and take care of them.\u201d But, like, responsibility to the universe. \u201cOh, they\u2019ll let you do this action movie.\u201d Well, then you better do a f—— great job. \u201cThey want you do \u2018Better Call Saul.\u2019\u201d Well, let\u2019s go. The universe is saying: You can do this. And you owe that opportunity that\u2019s so unjustified and magical. I just feel responsibility almost too readily. But the heart attack, however you want to feel about everybody\u2019s expectations of you, I mean, you\u2019re going to be gone. The world\u2019s going to go on without you, just fine. So I don\u2019t know, man. Yeah, you\u2019ve got to come through for people. But you\u2019ve also got a lot of freedom to invite who you want to be.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yakimaherald.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Bob Odenkirk ducks into a West Village coffee shop wearing sunglasses and a Chicago Cubs cap. Some degree of subterfuge might have been necessary for Odenkirk years ago. Surely fans of \u201cMr. Show\u201d or \u201cThe Larry Sanders Show\u201d might have recognized him. But with time, Odenkirk has traveled from the fringes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1961426,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[21741],"class_list":["post-1961425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Bob-Odenkirk-isnt-an-action-newbie-anymore-Entertainment.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1961425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1961425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1961425\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1961426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1961425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1961425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1961425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}