Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist - Bob Odenkirk

Episode Date: March 13, 2022

A comedian by trade, and a young writer at Saturday Night Live in the years of Chris Farley, Adam Sandler and Chris Rock, Bob Odenkirk made a dramatic career turn in 2009 when he landed a role on the hit series Breaking Bad and later earned his own spinoff show, Better Caul Saul. In this week’s “Sunday Sitdown,” Willie Geist talks to Odenkirk about a new memoir that documents that journey from SNL to dramatic actor all the way to action star.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey guys, Willie Geist here with another episode of the Sunday Sit Down podcast. My thanks as always for clicking and listening along. I'm excited to bring you my interview this week with one Bob Odenkirk. You may know him as the breakout star of Breaking Bad, where he played sketchy attorney Saul Goodman, which led to the spin-off, another hit series called Better Call Saul, now about to come out with its final season. Bob has a fascinating story. grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, one of seven children. It was mostly his mom raising them, and he frankly says he had to entertain her and keep people happy.

He had an eye and a nose and a love for comedy, went off to college and became a performer and a writer. And at 25 years old, was hired as a writer at Saturday Night Live. Now, you should know we're doing this interview in a new bar that's inside 30 Rockefeller Plaza in the same building where he worked for three and a half seasons on SNL. Went on and did Mr. Show, which was a cult hit, a favorite among comedy freaks and aficionados. And then this turn comes where he's sort of in a down period in his career. And frankly, you'll hear him talk about it.

Say he needed the money when Breaking Bad called. Didn't know anything about the show, hadn't seen it, went and took the part, and the rest is history. Since then, last year, he did a hit action movie called Nobody. He starred in. So he's had this. fascinating career that he writes about in a new memoir that just hit the New York Times bestseller list

at number two. It's called Comedy, Comedy, Comedy, Drama, which is the story of his life. And he says, all these people, these fans know him from drama, don't know he's had a long life in comedy. Just a really smart, funny, interesting guy to talk to. We also get into, you may have read the news last summer, the heart attack he suffered on the set of Better Call Saul and just how close he really was to not making it. A lot to get into right now on the Sunday Sit Down podcast with Bob Odenkirk. Good to see you, Bob. Thanks for doing this. Thank you for having me. I can't believe I finish this thing. I know. It's real. It's out. It's a pub day. It's a book. The world is going to see this as of today. Yeah, I wish it was a better time in the world, but maybe people need a distraction. It's a showbiz memoir.

I won't claim for it to be much more than that. But a fun one, I hope. It is fun. I think it's exactly the kind of distraction we need. What compelled you to sit down and tick through every step of your career? At this point, when you're still right in the middle of it. Well, can I just tell you something? It's not every step.

I left out a lot of failure. I include a lot of failure, but I left out a lot of failure because it's hard to write about failure. Shows that didn't go, you know, pilots or even scripts that didn't become pilots. And, but it's hard to write about something for people and say, you can't see this anywhere, but let me tell you what it was. And I promise you it was good or sometimes they really weren't good. But I left out a lot of failure. But I wanted to share all the ups and downs of a interesting career I think I've had. And for me, that was an encouragement when I was younger and trying to decide whether to go into show.

business and I bookend the story with this interaction I had with an older acting teacher in Chicago who told me, who just rambled this one day, I ran into him and he was a famous acting teacher named Del Close. And so I wanted to do the same thing in my book, kind of ramble through a career, and maybe that would be encouraging to some young people and also diverting and kind of funny for people who are familiar with Mr. Show, some of the things I wrote at Saturday Night Live, Tenacious D, Tim and Eric, all the things I've been involved with. But I wrote it because I was unpacking for my third season of Better Call Saul,

and my assistant, Melissa Hyman, was an improviser and a really great performer herself. And I started talking about these pictures I was looking at, pictures of me and Chris Farley and Del Close and me and Robert Smigel and Conan O'Brien. And I could see she was intrigued and I thought, well, I should tell my stories for people like that. You know, people who love comedy or maybe even doing it for a career. You also go back to sort of the origins of your performance and you're getting a reward for being entertaining and it started at home really. Yeah. It sounds like as one of seven. kid for your mom.

Yeah. My mom was a very strict Catholic and a very strict person and yet she laughed a lot. I mean she was not a stern person in her countenance and through

a day. She would laugh and joke a lot. Which is kind of weird because she was so she lived by the book, you know, but she could enjoy silliness and laughter and we I share a little of the tension of my house growing up with my father who struggled with the old drink and also just showing up occasionally but you know we we had a lot of

laughs and I had a great built-in audience with six brothers and sisters and so yeah it all started at home do you feel like some of that when you look back on it was making your mother happy because her husband was so difficult or making your brothers and sisters. For sure. It was definitely making each other laugh. And I would get up at the dinner table. We had a big, huge round table with a big lazy Susan in the middle of it. And you'd start a story, and then you'd stand up and walk to the other side of the kitchen. So everyone had a good sight line. And you'd act out someone you met that day, something that happened. And it was to make each other laugh. We actually had, in a house with a fair amount of tension that never went away, we had a lot of laughs.

Well, that's the thing. Hearing you talk about it in reading this book, the context is you had a dad who was an alcoholic and wasn't around. But all I see in pages of this book, at least, are joy. Well, there's not a lot to talk about when someone's literally not there ever. So, but I do think that the tension also is a thing you work with in comedy. Yeah. Right. So if everybody's feeling a little uneasy and someone starts being silly, it's a relief.

And everyone can join you in that place. It's one of the reasons Monty Python hit me so hard and I connected with it. And I shared, so did some of my friends who also had difficult home lives. And comedy is a great. great reassurance to a person that it's all a crazy mess, life on earth and people. And so you don't have to take your own maybe challenging situation too seriously or too hard. And especially when you're a kid and you see something like Monty Python where it's a bunch of adults to you. Well, they were only in their 20s, but they're still adults. And they're

really ripping manners and society and dignity and they're laughing at adult behavior. And it makes you feel like I can calm down. I can exhale life is a joke. And these adults agree with me that it's silly. And it's a great relief. It's a great relief. It's a great outlet for that tension. Clearly Monty Python was a huge influence on you.

made you want to get into this at a very young age as a teenager, I think, even if you sort of had in your mind. I was like 11 or 12 when they came on public TV and Channel 11 in Chicago on Sunday nights. And then you go into Chicago, right? You see some improv as a teenager. You say, oh, this is something that a person can do for a living. Yeah, I mean, it took me a long time to come to that realization. You know, when you grow up away from show business, it's a very mysterious business. And imagining a life as an actor or a writer is very hard to do. I mean, it can take a while. So I was writing comedy and performing comedy all through junior high and high school. And I share that I had teachers who would encourage me to do comedy sketches for my projects.

So if I did a report on Abraham Lincoln or we did reports on countries around the world, and I would turn mine into a comedy sketch. And they would have me do it all around the school. I went to Jefferson Junior High in Naperville, Illinois. And I had a great group of teachers. One name I remember, Mr. Chardulow, and they would encourage me to do a comedy sketch. And I did a number of them and got great laughs

and got to take it around the school. Teachers really can help a young person find what they can do. well and discover things about themselves. So they help me a lot. And whether it's your mom or your teachers, there could be an instinct to suppress that. That's not good behavior. You can be serious in school. No, they always encouraged me until it was a problem. I had a science teacher at Jefferson Junior High. Let me teach the class one day because I was goofing around. She's like, come on up here. Here's the lesson plan. You do it. And I got a lot of leapsing. way with my comedy in junior high. But then in high school, some of the teachers said,

okay, calm down. That's enough of that. I got to do a little bit of trouble, but I didn't spend a lot of time in high school. Right. You left after your junior year, right? 16 years old, out of Naperville, North, on the college. Went to college. And what did you have in mind for college? Was it still this obsession with performance? Well, no, I didn't for a second think I could make it in show business. I went to college. I was, um, I don't know, I was going to do what I was curious about, which was radio and comedy and performance, but I was taking classes to, I guess I was thinking about a degree in forestry or something like that, because I had a, took a test that said I would do well there. I love being in Boy Scouts. I love camping.

And so just in the course of going to four colleges, College of DuPage, Marquette University, Southern Illinois University, and Columbia in Chicago. But my degrees from Southern, I just did radio comedy. And in the third year is when I thought, boy, I do this with all my spare time. I just go sit down and write comedy.

Maybe that's a career. And it even took me years even after that to sort of think, yeah, I'm going to do this. You mentioned Del Close. Yeah. Sometime after you graduate college and before SNL, you have this. In my last year of college at Southern Illinois University, I, as an excuse to try to see what, you know, a glimpse behind the curtain,

I set up to interview Joyce Sloan at Second City in Chicago, the closest thing I knew to a professional entertainment thing. and she gave me a great interview, but I walked down the street that day, and I happened upon a person who's a legend in comedy circles, Del Close, who was a teacher of improvisation and sketch comedy in Chicago. And Del just went on this ramp this one day,

and I was sitting right there. He took me into his apartment, and he just talked for two hours about all of his career, and I walked out of his place, thinking, I want to try this. Yeah. Yeah, he's so influential for people who don't know, they should look up the imprint he's left on comedy.

And I love how you tie it up at the end when you have someone asking you, how do I make my own break and you say, you don't. Yeah. But you might run into Dell Close on the street one day and off you go. Yeah, I mean, yeah, a student asked how, you know, everyone's so success-driven now. Everybody always wanted to succeed. but there's more of a sense that you can engineer your own success now with social media and people who've done that very thing.

But I just, I'm not sure there's, doesn't sound like a joyful pursuit to me. For me, it was just do the things you love, keep inventing new things, try not to get depressed or bitter when they don't go your way, and keep bringing, you know, new ideas and new, opportunities to show yourself and your talents to the public, whatever that is, in a theater, in print, you know, and over time you'll find opportunities and the business will find you, you know. And the business found you. We're sitting in Rockefeller Center right now where you worked for three and a half years

as a writer on S&L, a couple floors up from where we're sitting. Yeah. What memories does this building conjure for you? Sweat, fear, anxiety, depression. Comedy. Comedy last on that list. I did have a lot of laughs, though. Usually around 2 a.m. when we get our second, third meal of the day.

And I'd get hit with the sugar rush of whatever we ate. And then Conan O'Brien would start being, really silly, and then I would giggle like a maniac for two hours. I wrote here for S&L for three and a half years, and it was hard. It was a hard place to be for me. It took me a long time to figure how I could help the show, and I really wanted to help the show. In the end, I didn't do all that much except to learn how to write a comedy sketch from the great writers that were here, Robert Smigel, Jim Downey, Al Franken, Jack Handy, an amazing crew.

And they taught me how to write a sketch, which I then took that information and knowledge. By the way, I got paid to be here. And then I went to L.A. and wrote the best show I ever wrote, Mr. Show, with all the knowledge I learned here. So they got none of the benefit. I got the money, the free learning, and they got nothing. I did write the motivational speaker in Chicago for Chris Farley,

and then that came here, and they performed it on the show. Chris did it here, and it was a big sketch for SNL. It played real well here. But again, I wasn't even here anymore. I had left when they did that. Well, I was curious about that. So you're sitting at home on your couch, maybe watching SNL. Maybe Chris has told you we're doing it.

Oh, yeah. What was it like to watch your work come to life? That sketch was such a joy to do. We did it at Second City during our run there. I was part of a Second City main stage show with Chris. And it was, my daughter asked me once, what was the most fun you had in show business? And I said doing that motivational speaker sketch every night at Second City.

And so I was pretty sure it would land. And it was just a, I mean, just Chris was just a whirlwind and a joy in that sketch. So I knew it would work. It was great. I was so happy that it got put on the air. You know, sometimes I think it can be hard to take a sketch sort of whole cloth from a theater company and put it up here as part of the TV show. But they did it and it went well. And to me, that was, yes, about his physicality.

He breaks the table at the end, but there was something else about that character. What did you write into it that made it? Pain, sadness. Right. The guy's a sense of his own failure. You know, he's a motivational speaker who's using himself as a negative example of how not to be, of how you don't want to end up. And Chris just made a beautiful, funny character out of it. just a joy to watch.

The line about it, is that Bill Shakespeare over there? I can't see too good. It's amazing. It's so good. Well, he wouldn't stop until he made every performer on the stage laugh. I mean, he made the audience laugh right away, but he would keep doing mannerisms and, you know, until he got right in your face

and he would make you laugh. And they do in the sketch. And they did on the TV show, he carried that over. That was his mission. You really were here, though, despite, you know, it was hard to be here. Yeah. With a bunch of guys on the cusp of something, right? Sandler, Farley, Chris Rock.

Greg Daniels. Greg Daniels. Went on to write The American Office. Conan, of course. Conan O'Brien and Robert Smigel, triumphed the insult comic dog and lots of other things. And then as performers, Adam Sandler, Farley, Spade. And I was actually here when Nora Dunn was here and Jan Hooks as well. So it was that transition time that I was here.

Did you have a sense as you worked with and watched them perform that guys like Sandler, rock, and Barley were desperate to be the next great? I mean, they were super funny guys. And Sandler especially was so comfortable right away. We were so confident and sure of himself. And it was very likable energy that he had and still does. And I don't know where it came from because that was unique. I mean, most people who get hired at SNLR are so intimidated by having been given the job. And it slows you down for a year or two.

You have to get your bearings. But Adam came in just raring to go and he was great fun to be around. Hey guys, thanks for listening to the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Stick around to hear more from Bob Odenkirk right after the break. Welcome back now more of my conversation with Bob Odenkirk. You mentioned Mr. Show, the classic, that you pulled off with David Cross. That is the thing that seems like you always wanted to do. It is.

And finally got the chance. Yeah, yeah. I mean, all my challenges at SNL could be crystallized. in the fact that it just wasn't going to be the show I wanted it to be. I wanted to work harder on the sketches, clean them up more, rehearse them, act them. You know, I liked Python in the way one sketch became another sketch, and you kept the energy going, and you kind of kept the audience in the mindset of the show for the whole half hour.

And those things can't happen at Saturday Night Live for a lot of reasons. You have commercials. So I got to do it finally. I went to Los Angeles. I did the Ben Stiller show first, which was also great fun, and I love talking about that in the book, because those were all my friends, Ben and Judd and Janine and Andy Dick.

We were all good friends and loved being around each other. And then that still wasn't that perfect show that I wanted to do, but I figured I was done. And then I just kept at it and met David Cross, and we got to do this show that was kind of everything I was hoping we could try to make happen. And HBO gave us the chance, and we did Mr. Show, which you can see on HBO Max. Still there. And it is only a little bit dated.

It is dated, but not, because it wasn't a topical show, we couldn't date it too much. We had to kind of dig deeper into subject matter. And so it's amazing how much of it is still relevant now. When you look back on it, I guess it's been 20 years, right? Went out there in 98, more than 20 years. Coming up on 25 years. How proud of that show are you now as you look at it? Like, does it hold up for you?

Yeah, it does. I hesitate to tell people about Mr. Show because I imagine if you haven't seen it already, well, you're not in the club, so tough beans, you ain't joining. But maybe you will. Maybe if you saw it, you might like it, especially the third and fourth season. I'm super proud of it. I know that it was a cult show. I know that it didn't play to everyone.

But the degree to which we were able to pull things off, really bring them to fruition in the best way, make a sketchwork. look there's something wrong with me I love sketch comedy so much and I still do even though I'm doing drama now for years and it's been very good to me and I feel like I fit well there as a performer it's still to me kind of says the most about

the human condition to me sketch comedy does it's just super silly and I just love it. I just love it and I always will. As you say, the fans who are in the original club, Mr. Show, they see everyone else's Johnny come lately. Better Call Saul, nobody.

You didn't know him back then. Yeah, yeah. By the way, the reason I called the book Comedy, Comedy, Comedy, Drama, I was afraid of the action movie I did last year. Nobody, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul. These are massive worldwide hits. And so I was just concerned that someone would pick up my book thinking, I want to read the story of this actor who I like or whose shows I like.

And then all this crap about comedy, I've never heard of any of this. What's Tenacious D? What's Tim and Eric? And that's my life, you know? And this other stuff is the tag end. Although I do write about Breaking Bad and I write about Better Call Saul. and this has been an incredible journey and a place to go, and I hope to get to do more drama. But my life was aimed towards comedy,

and that's what I spent my time doing. And what's so fascinating about your story you read about it in the book is the drama piece happened out of necessity, effectively. You're on this comedy, you directed some movies, and you needed work. I did. I needed work. I was in a hole financially, which is so weird,

because how do you do that? I don't even know. I would have to dig deep to find out. I don't do drugs. I don't spend money wildly. But somehow I got in a hole. And my business manager said to me, listen, don't worry. It's going to be okay.

Just say yes to work. Whatever it is. You know, I was kind of a person who didn't. I did what I wanted. And I didn't spend a lot of money. And somehow I got in this financial hole. and he said, just do whatever comes your way. And here comes Breaking Bad.

And I get a call, and my agent's worried about it. And he says, hey, whatever you do, don't say no to this job. Please, it's a good job. These are good writing. And I was like, I'm not going to say no. I haven't said no in two years. But he somehow didn't notice that. Anyway, I'm still glad I said yes and did it.

And it came off so well. Well, I think people don't realize, too, at the time you were asked to join the show. Breaking Bad was not yet. Breaking Bad in terms of popularity. So you didn't really know the show. You get on the plane to Albuquerque and try to play a little catch-up. Yeah, I hadn't seen the show. I watched about 10 minutes of it on the plane and I kind of went, okay, it's a drama. It's kind of funny, but I get it. Yeah, I had little kids at home. So even when I was joining the cast in the third and fourth season, and I really did need to see the show, because at one point, Brian Cranston busted my balls in the makeup trailer, and I said something about Gus. I was like, you and Gus are like,

you guys work together, huh? And he goes, you've never seen the show, have you? And I go, uh, well, maybe I have it. I needed to see the show at a certain point, to understand what was happening. But I put the show on, and you know any parent knows this i'm like okay i'm gonna watch breaking bad i probably was what was it like the third or fourth episode where they put the guy in the vada of acid and like my daughter walks in right then and i'm like i can't watch this show at home daddy's gonna be on a new show sweetie yeah and uh eventually i watched it that was wise yeah and you also you talk in the book about learning what you call how to be a real actor. You've done all this sketch comedy and everything. You had to learn how to become a dramatic actor, taking cues from people like Brian Cranston.

Yeah, absolutely. I had the best teachers in the business. I had Cranston and Aaron Paul and that whole cast. And then when it came to Better Call Saul, where I had to up my game more, I had Ray Seahorn and Patrick Fabian and Michael Mando and, of course, Jonathan Banks. These are people who have took a class or two in acting. They didn't just show up one day. Me. Like, yeah, I could do this. But, you know, all my work, the years doing comedy,

and my work as a writer especially helped me to act. And I do think I tell young people, you know, try to do every job on the set. If you try to direct one thing, even if you want to be an actor, You should direct something. You should write something. You should have a sympathy for what the other people are doing as part of this group effort.

But also, you'll be a better actor if you have a sense of what the director's trying to do and what their camera angles are and the lenses they're using. And you'll be a better actor if you can look at a script and think about what the writer thought about when they wrote this. So I would just deconstruct the script. And that's how I approached acting, is to take us. script apart, almost like putting it back into its original form of just ideas and then thinking how they invented this character and then trying to work with that. What did your old comedy buddies think as this new life began to unfold for you?

You're getting Emmy nomination. It's going really well. What did you hear from your... How about the action movie? Well, yeah. That made people's brains fall out of the head. Everybody, fans, friends. I heard Ben Stiller was, I think he was on with Howard a couple weeks ago.

He saw you out running or something one time. He said, what are you doing? He said, getting ready to do an action movie. I've been training for a couple of years. What? Yeah. What was that like when you signed? Well, I hope I blew their minds.

I think I did. And you pulled it off. I pulled it off. Could have gone either way. Could have gone anyway, man. Boy, that could have been. What is wrong with this guy? He's having a midlife crisis like nobody's business in front of the whole world on a movie screen.

I pulled it off because I had such good people around me on the movie Nobody. I was trained by the best stunt actor alive, Daniel Bernhardt. The writer, Derek Kolstad, wrote the John Wick films. Ilya Nishulah, the director, great Russian director. It's just an amazing crew around me, but I came at it with complete devotion and intent, you know. I wanted to make something that was not ironic. I didn't want to protect myself with comedy, although it is funny,

but my character isn't aware of himself being funny. So I don't have that protection of my character winking at the camera going, you know, this is crazy what I'm doing. He believes in what he's doing in the movie Nobody. So that's where you can really embarrass yourself. So I just went out on that limb, but I don't know what the joy is in this business without the danger as part of it, the danger of really embarrassing yourself and taking that risk. And so that's what I did. And it worked out. But the training helped a lot. I did train for two years. And I wanted to do my own fighting because I didn't think I could offer too much to the world of action films,

but one of the things I could do was to continue being the character in the midst of the fight. So that bus scene, you know, I wanted to get hurt right away. I wanted to, you know, get thrown out of the bus. I hope it's not a spoiler for anyone at this point. But I love the idea of him being able to leave in the middle of the fight. Like he could just go home then. You know, and he goes back into the bus and keeps fighting. I just love the cheekiness of that, but also the craziness of it.

And so, yeah, I just gave myself over to it. It's an amazing scene. I watched it again this morning and knowing you from all your comedy projects and everything else, you go, okay, here comes Bob Odenkirk on the bus. Yeah. He's dropping the bullets out of the chamber. Yeah. Am I going to buy this?

Yeah. And once you got hit, you said, okay, he's vulnerable. Yeah. And then once you started beating every bit up, it was totally, we were in. You pulled it off. Yeah. But what I brought to it, if I did things right and it seems I did, is just that he really does seem vulnerable and, you know, like he's hurting and dragging his ass through this thing, making himself do it. And it was fun to do.

What was the pitch like around town? Bob Odenkirk wants to carry an action. I thought I'd get laughed out of the room. right away, right from calling my manager and saying, I think I could do an action movie. And people were open-minded to it. I think for people who've seen Better Call Saul, they know I play an earnest character in that.

He can be very funny and even self-consciously funny. But a great deal of the show is taken up with his earnest hunger for respect and love from the people in the people. his life. His older brother, played by Michael McKeon and his girlfriend, Ray Seahorn, plays Kim Wexler. He's really looking for love and respect from people who he cares about. And he's not getting it. It's, he keeps trying and falling back. And that's, to me, an action hero. And so the only thing missing was the fighting, was the stunt fighting. And so I didn't think the gap was as big as it seems from outside, especially if you're thinking of me as a writer from Saturday Night Live,

and you're thinking, how does that guy become an action start? But all these little steps in between, but mostly better call Saul, where I did bring this, what I do think is the same core values of an action lead. And so people were open to it. They listened when I said, I think I could do this. And then I started training right away because I had such a long way to go. And I did want to do my own fighting. I love Jackie Chan movies.

I love police story is one of my favorite movies. And I watched it with my kids. It's an action movie. And if you want to watch an action movie with your kids, it's a fun one. It's very clever and inventive and you laugh a lot in it. But I think it mattered to me that you're seeing the actor and the character still, even in the middle of the action. And you're thinking about that guy, and nobody I wanted to play a guy who has, he was not sure he's going to win this fight. And because we're pretty used to an action hero. And I love,

the Bourne films and I love 007 and that character knows he's going to win. I mean, you can see the confidence in his eyes in the middle of every fight. In the case of Jason Bourne, he's kind of on autopilot. He's surprised that he can do this. But once he knows he can do it,

he's like off to the races. But I wanted to play somebody who really doubted whether he was going to win each of these fights. and who suffered when he got hurt. And anyway, that's what we got. Does the success of nobody did really good box office at a time

when people still weren't totally going back to the movies and huge on demand as well? Does that mean we're getting more action film? I hope so. I hope so. And I'd love to do one that's more like that Jackie Chan film that I referenced that uses comedy. I would love to do a comic action film.

where the action itself is clever and funny. I can see it. And it's interesting what you say too. You're right. If it went from Mr. Show to nobody, you couldn't do it. But these steps along the way got you there, and back to your original point, it wasn't by design. You just took things that were in front of you

that led you to this place. It's been like building the bridge as I walk across it. But there's been a lot of missteps and a lot of, of failures and I try to write about those and that's a challenge but I hope that I made it entertaining for people to even read about a show that you'll never see the light of day but hopefully it'll make you laugh to hear about it okay so now I've got to ask you about the last season of better call Saul yeah how are you feeling about walking away from that character after this long run it's still hitting me I mean we only finished shooting two weeks ago um so

we've been shooting for almost a year this final season, which is going to be 13 episodes. So it's longer than our normal season. And it took almost a year to shoot, partly because of COVID protocols. And we did a great job. Very few of our cast and crew got COVID. So we handled it really well. And it's a great final season. I was thrilled with what they wrote and the way they allowed the characters to grow through this final season.

season. So I can't wait for the audience to see this starts April 18th. I hope I got that right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And I'll tell you one thing. If you're a fan of Breaking Bad and you haven't seen Better Call Saul yet, you should catch up because in our final season, the two shows, Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul are enmeshed like they've never been before. That was a really neat thing that the writers did too. They tied the shows together even more than they already have been. Are you getting reflective about this character that truly changed the trajectory of your career and your life about saying goodbye to him? You know, one of the things that's hard is I like Jimmy McGill, which is the actual person that is all characters, all created. For me, he's a real person.

Saul was the front. Right. Was the persona he played in Breaking Bad and that he presented to the public as this, you know, fast-talkie. sleazy lawyer who he wanted you to see him that way you know he wanted to present himself that way um he wanted to attract a certain clientele that would like that and um that guy saw goodman i don't like you know i don't like people who operate with situational ethics you know whatever's ethical that's to my advantage in the moment that's my ethic I don't like people like that.

So I didn't love this guy when we, I was fun to play him in Breaking Bad, but I didn't like him. Then Jimmy McGill is a great guy. I mean, he's a sweet guy. He's got skills, but he doesn't know how to use them. I think a lot of people struggle to find their best place for their talents in the world. They don't, when they're 22, luckily, find the thing that they love. and they maybe find it when they're 30 or even 40 or maybe even later in life. So that's his trajectory.

Jimmy is trying to find a place where he can use his talents, which he loves to use, but he can't find where he can get the love and respect from the people he cares about. So I like Jimmy. I'm not in love with Saul. I think I'm going to feel badly. when I watched the season that I had to say goodbye to this guy and then his years go by, because there has never been a better role written than Jimmy McGill, Saul Goodman, Gene Tachovic. That's who he is when he's in hiding.

James McGill. I mean, there's one page would be pure comedy. Four pages later would be absolutely earnest. heart on a sleeve, you know, drama. And I did not deserve this role. When I would read those scripts and I would see that dynamic variance, I would think there's some great actor somewhere who deserves this and not me. But I got to do it. I did my best. So amazing that the circumstances of your life led you to that character to say yes to it in that moment yeah i mean you know the reason i got to play saw all goodman was because of mr show yeah and i thought it was because of stevie grant

on larry sanders because they were kind of similar sure but uh turns out the writers at breaking bad loved watching mr show and they wanted to they needed to invent this character it was for a story point to build out the story on Breaking Bad. And they were only intending to have me for three or four episodes. And I could only do three because I was already signed up to do how I met your mother. And that's why they invented Jonathan Banks' character, Mike Ermintrout, so that that story could carry on in that fourth episode. And here we are.

We then got our own show together, me and John. around for more of my conversation with Bob Odenkirk right after a quick break. Welcome back. Now the rest of my conversation with Bob Odenkirk. You've been talking in the last couple of weeks pretty openly about the heart incident, I think you're calling it. Well, I'm trying to do the right thing. Hey, everybody, I had a heart attack. But if you're a heart doctor, you know that I had a heart incident. And I didn't appreciate it until I've heard you in interviews talking about how deadly serious it really was. It was, and I love a doctor to explain to me what the difference is.

My Widowmaker artery was completely blocked, and that's why it's called the Widow Maker, because you die when that happens. But I went down, and I was very lucky that my co-stars, Ray Seahorn and Patrick Fabian, were right nearby, and they rushed over to me, and they set off the alarm, screaming, and some wonderful people, Angie Meyer and Rosa Estrada, who is our health officer on Better Call Saul, who both know CPR really well,

started CPR on me. And if you haven't taken a brush up on your CPR class, do it. Because it's a little different than it was 15, 20 years ago when I first took it. You don't have to breathe into the person anymore. Oh, I don't think people realize that. pounding going. Okay.

Because the body naturally sucks in air if you're doing that. Right. Among other reasons why you don't need to do that. And they came out and did CPR properly right away, broke my ribs like you're supposed to, and carried on until the ambulance arrived. And also, Rosa had an AED device, which is a defibrillator in her car. So because she had that, she was able to go get it and it took only three tries. It's not supposed to take three.

It's not supposed to take. One, maybe two if you're left. Yeah, yeah. I was not present for any of it, but I'm told it was a pretty shocking day on set and traumatizing for all my co-stars and crew members and people I love very much who loved me and stood by myself. side and then went to the hospital with me and then all this outpouring of love on social media. Of course, we all rail against social media. It's a cesspool. But occasionally it's not. Occasionally, it's a place that people share their best selves. And that's what people did with me. And I didn't know about it until about a week or two later when people showed me the outpouring of love that

came my way that I don't deserve, but I appreciate very much. And for the rest of my life, we'll be thinking about and trying to be worthy of. I'm sure in that moment after, as you're recovering, or even now, you take a step back and you say, okay, I survive that. We've got a great career. I've got a great family. Yeah. What a perspective did it give you? I'm still getting that perspective from this occurrence. I just appreciation for what the life I get to live and the people in my life. We're also driven these days and pack our days full of work and activity.

And you've got to take a moment to just look people in the eye and appreciate that they're with you and to tell them you love them. And I'm going to try to do a better job of that moving forward. That's pretty damn good. It's a good thing to take away from it. Yeah. And Bob Sagitt passing recently made me think about that because I only met him one time. And he really was a genuinely sweet guy who cared about other people. And you could have a brief conversation with him and feel very connected very quickly.

and he was, I would like to try to be a little more like him as I move forward. I've also gotten so many things that I dreamed of. Mr. Show, making that action movie happen. That was a crazy brain fart that I gave, devoted myself to, but still, cuckoo crazy. and if I was told we're not making it or it didn't work, I'd be like, that was nuts. I can't believe I asked everyone if I could do that. You know, I've just gotten so many things,

and, you know, I should move forward just being more appreciative of what I have around me. I'll try to. I hope that that spirit is in the book. For sure. And I think that in a weird way, It's not just associated with success. It's associated with a variety of experiences and all the different people and all the different projects I've gotten to do.

Because that, to me, is the most rewarding thing, is that variety more than any one thing and the success or failure of any one thing. And taking something positive. Things are even perceived as failures. somebody you met, experience you had. One of the things I realized in the course of all that living is people believe what you send them. So if you come out of a failure going, oh, I'm a failure, I failed, what a terrible thing I did,

and you carry that around, that darkness, they'll go, oh, I guess you're a failure. But if you come out of that and go, hey, that didn't work, shoot what next I'm gonna work really hard

on what I have to do next then the people around you the world goes okay great what do you got next you know they just take those signals

and and buy into it and so it's a great thing to learn about life that that's true and to just move forward and try to try to get a lesson

sometimes there's no lesson, especially in show business. Sometimes you try something and it just didn't come together and there's nothing to learn from it. You just got to try again. So I try to pick out lessons, but sometimes there aren't any.

The lesson is just show up again tomorrow. Well, I'm going to ask you to answer your own question then here. What is next? You've shown you can do comedy, drama, action. What else is out there in your mind? I just told you I would like to do a comedy action. That would combine all this craziness. Next, though, is specifically a podcast that my son wrote that I narrate called Summer

and Argyle that comes out on Audible on March 12th. And also a project with my old friend, David Cross, and my brother Bill Odenkirk, a great comedy writer who spent the last however many years at the Simpsons but both Mr. Show people and David and I are going to do a show called Guru Nation

where we play multiple gurus and have fun. It's sort of a cult. Oh, it's going to be about cults. It's kind of crazy and funny. I have no doubt. Can't wait to see it. Bob, thanks so much for the time. Congratulations on the book. Yeah, I got to go grow a long beard Yes, you do.

To play a cult leader. You got to go all in. Getting to work. Thanks, Bob. All right, thank you. Appreciate it. My big thanks again to Bob for a great conversation for spending some time with me to talk about his new memoir. It is called Comedy, Comedy, Comedy, Drama.

It's in stores now. And you can catch the sixth and final season of Better Call Saul on AMC, starting April 18th. My thanks to all of you, as always, for listening. If you want to hear more of these conversations with my guests every week, Be sure to click subscribe and follow so you never miss an episode. And don't forget to tune into Sunday today every weekend on NBC. I'm Willie Geist. We'll see you right back here next week on the Sunday Sit Down podcast.