Back in July of 2021, Bob Odenkirk collapsed on the set of his beloved show Better Call Saul after suffering a heart attack. He returned to set that fall, and the show is set to return for its sixth and final season later this year.
And now, in a new interview with The New York Times, Odenkirk has opened up about his heart attack and the impending end of Better Call Saul, calling the series finale "a challenging way to go, to finish the series."
About his on-set heart attack, Odenkirk said: "We were shooting a scene, we'd been shooting all day, and luckily I didn't go back to my trailer. I went to play the Cubs game and ride my workout bike [at a space where he and his co-stars regularly spent downtime], and I just went down. Rhea [Seehorn] said I started turning bluish-gray right away."
Thankfully, Odenkirk's co-stars Seehorn and Patrick Fabian were with him when he collapsed, and their shouts alerted medics to the scene. As reported by The New York Times: "After a few agonizingly long minutes, the show's health safety supervisor, Rosa Estrada, and an assistant director, Angie Meyer, arrived, administering CPR and hooking him up to an automated defibrillator. It zapped him once, then once more, producing an irregular pulse that quickly disappeared. 'The third time,' Odenkirk said, 'it got me that rhythm back.'"
Odenkirk had stents installed in two places and eventually recovered, returning to set in the fall to film the series' sixth and final season.
Though careful to avoid any real spoilers, he describes the series' final episode as "not flashy. It's substantial, and on some level, it's things I hoped for, for years, in this character's brain.
"On the other hand, yeah, I have to read it again. But what I like about it is, it's not cheap. It's not easy. It doesn't feel cartoonish. It's pretty great, I think. It's pretty great. I would wanna end with this kind of character-development focus. That's what it's about, instead of something that just has guns in it. I guess there's a few guns, but they're not like in other episodes."
The final season of Better Call Saul will air sometime in 2022 on AMC.
And now, in a new interview with The New York Times, Odenkirk has opened up about his heart attack and the impending end of Better Call Saul, calling the series finale "a challenging way to go, to finish the series."
About his on-set heart attack, Odenkirk said: "We were shooting a scene, we'd been shooting all day, and luckily I didn't go back to my trailer. I went to play the Cubs game and ride my workout bike [at a space where he and his co-stars regularly spent downtime], and I just went down. Rhea [Seehorn] said I started turning bluish-gray right away."
Thankfully, Odenkirk's co-stars Seehorn and Patrick Fabian were with him when he collapsed, and their shouts alerted medics to the scene. As reported by The New York Times: "After a few agonizingly long minutes, the show's health safety supervisor, Rosa Estrada, and an assistant director, Angie Meyer, arrived, administering CPR and hooking him up to an automated defibrillator. It zapped him once, then once more, producing an irregular pulse that quickly disappeared. 'The third time,' Odenkirk said, 'it got me that rhythm back.'"
Odenkirk had stents installed in two places and eventually recovered, returning to set in the fall to film the series' sixth and final season.
Though careful to avoid any real spoilers, he describes the series' final episode as "not flashy. It's substantial, and on some level, it's things I hoped for, for years, in this character's brain.
"On the other hand, yeah, I have to read it again. But what I like about it is, it's not cheap. It's not easy. It doesn't feel cartoonish. It's pretty great, I think. It's pretty great. I would wanna end with this kind of character-development focus. That's what it's about, instead of something that just has guns in it. I guess there's a few guns, but they're not like in other episodes."
The final season of Better Call Saul will air sometime in 2022 on AMC.
