Wild Card with Rachel Martin - Bob Odenkirk

Episode Date: April 16, 2026

Bob Odenkirk says he was never supposed to be an action hero, but he’s grateful for the way his career has turned out. Starting out as a sketch comedian, he never could have foreseen roles like Saul Goodman in “Better Call Saul” or Sheriff Ulysses in his newest film, “Normal.” He tells Rachel he takes none of it for granted, as he retraces his path from his humble Illinois roots. To listen sponsor-free and support the show, sign up for Wild Card+ at plus.npr.org/wildcard See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Just a heads up, this episode does have some strong language. When have you been in over your head? Oh, many times. Many, many times. I don't want to look like an ass. I don't want to do something that I can't do in front of everybody and then look terrible. But I don't want to do that less than most people. I'm Rachel Martin, and this is Wild Card. The show where Cards Control the Conversation.

Each week, my guest answers questions about their life. Questions pulled from a deck of cards. They're allowed to skip one question and to flip one back on me. My guest this week is Bob Odenkirk. Bottom line, if I do it, and it's as embarrassing as I think it could be. Who cares? Who cares? I was never supposed to be an action hero. I'm a comedy writer. I'll go write more comedy.

I'm pretty sure Bob Odenkirk is someone who enjoys breaking other people's expectations. At his core, he's a sketchcom. comedy guy. Later came a pivot to dramatic acting with Breaking Bad and Ben A Call Saul. And now Bob Odenkirk is a bona fide action hero and I'm here for all of it. His latest contribution to the action genre is a movie called Normal. And I'm so happy to welcome Bob Odenkirk to Wildcard. Hi Bob. Hi, Rachel. How are you? I'm so well. I'm very pleased that you wanted to do this. Are you ready to go? I'm ready to go. Throw the cards at me. Round one is memories.

Okay, here we go. Hit two. Two. Go right for the middle. Yeah. Two, here we go. We're off to the races. Okay.

Where did you get to feel independent as a kid? Boy Scouts. Boy Scouts. Yeah. Well, I grew up in a family of seven. Mm-hmm. I was the second oldest, and I love my siblings, all of them, very much. and we're still great friends.

And we were a pack who supported each other. My dad was an alcoholic, and my mom was a wonderful, hardworking but overworked woman who we all thought the most of, and yet she was stretched way, way, way, way too thin. That was her choice. She knew she was having kids when she had them. But so we were great friends. But to be independent was Boy Scouts, I went on a monthly camping trip. And mostly to Wisconsin, which is why I have such affection for Wisconsin and all the wonderful camping that you can do there.

Did you look around and you just felt not surrounded by six other siblings? And that gave you permission to be more of who you were? I mean, look, we didn't really have parents. around when I was at home because there was too much going on. But it was just a, yeah, I mean, it was a pretty wild scenario, to be honest with you. You tell me it was like a little Lord of the flies kind of? Yeah, it was more Lord of the Flies. And it could get real Lord of the Flies. Like, it could get crazy. Right, right, right. Yeah. It's a bunch of guys who are not fully developed in any way with fire at their disposal.

encouraged, encouraged to have fire around them. Yeah. And knives and guns sometimes. Right. Right. I mean, come on. How is that not a worse? How is that not a litany of disasters?

Yeah. And freedom. But it was so great. I loved it. Okay. One. Go for one. One.

What's something your parents taught you to, love. Yeah, I mean, I'm going to say childhood. My mom did not have the obviously bandwidth to really hang out with any of us. Yeah. But she clearly loved kids. Like, she was so entertained by kids. In fact, my brother, Steve and I, he's one year older than me. We got into fights not often, but a couple times. And whenever we would get into fights, she would laugh so hard at these two boys punching each other. That it would kill the spirit of the fight. It would end the fight.

If you're entertaining your mom. You're beating each other up and you're really mad. And here's your mom just laughing so hard right there. Not telling you to stop laughing. Plus maybe she knew subconsciously that she was diffusing it in some way. Yeah, she did. She diffused it. But she was just entertained by kids, not just when they fought, by everything about them, by the things they said and things that they, she just found it endlessly entertaining.

And I feel the same way. I remember my kids are now 25 and 27, but when they were little, I directed a couple of feature films, and I wrote a lot of things. TV pilots that didn't get made, basically called development hell. But I couldn't wait to get home. I would go to work at 10, and I would be off work at 2.30 of 3 so that I could go hang out and watch those kids be funny. And it was the most entertaining part of my life. Yeah.

Yeah. Forgive me for not knowing this. You said your dad was an alcoholic. Did he leave, or was he still around? So he wasn't around much at all. Like you couldn't find him. Okay. He must have come home seven times, I know that, because there were seven of us.

But outside of those seven visits, he just, you could not find this guy. And then he left when I was 14 completely, which was the best thing in the world. That was the greatest day of my life. Truly? You didn't feel a grief. It was such a joy. Wow. It was such a deep, deep feeling of joy.

Wow. Well, because when he was around, it was this 10. and uncertainty and it wasn't violence. He wasn't violent. He was just unhelpful and out of it and disconnected and erratically there or not there. And so it was just like, great. He's gone because we're running this place anyway. Right.

Me and my brother, Steve, the older boys are running the show. Everyone's trying to help as much as they can. My mom's, you know, humping it. And together we were a great team. And with a great bit of luck, my grandfather had made a fair amount of money by working hard. And he helped us out. So we were able to, we had a pretty copacetic life without my father in the picture. Last one in this round.

One, two, or three. Okay, go with three, because that's the one we haven't used yet. Sure. If I'm counting. What's a piece of advice you were smart to ignore? Well, I pretty much ignore most advice. I don't know. I never had a mentor that was, I had a lot of people I looked up to.

When you don't have a dad, and as any guy knows this, you look for dads everywhere. You know, and even at the age of 63, I still go, I want to be more like him. I'm still like looking for an older guy and sometimes a slightly younger guy who are like, God, he's got it together. And that's the way to be. That's the way to handle whatever life. And I'm constantly looking for that because of, I think because of no father.

I'm going to point to somebody named Vince Gilligan, who created Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul and now has to show Pluribus. The way Vince moves through the world with real calm, focus, and you could almost call it perfectionism, but it's a high level of professionalism. and he does so with kindness and he's gentle about it.

He's not a jerk ever. And so like, well, this is way far from your question. I don't care. This is interesting. He's the, in some ways the opposite of me. I'm impetuous and almost more excited by a risk. than excited by the idea of doing something well. Like, in other words, he'd rather, I think, do something as excellently as it could be done.

And if you said to me, would you rather take five years to do this thing really well or just do it in one year, this crazy thing that you'll probably fail at? I'd be like, well, let's just do it in one year. I'll probably fail at it. You're right. I'll probably fail that. Let's just do it. Yeah, but you'll do it better if you take five years. I know, I know, by give or take, you know, let's just burn it down. But as far as advice goes, I really think I never had that.

I never had anyone tell me anything that I'd consider big advice. Well, it sounds like you personally respond better to people who are modeling. things instead of telling you things. Yes, yes. And I've never, probably too, there's nobody I've ever idolized on the level that they would be my mentor. Like as soon as I would get near anything like that, I'd back up from it. Because I don't think there's anyone and you can go through history and you can name any human being ever. that I think is, Abraham Lincoln would be the only person I would think,

I think highly up on a level that is like, oh, no, that guy's really another level of human. Yeah. But other than that, I just think everybody's flawed and even kind of dumb in some ways. And again, that goes for every, single person, whoever was human. Okay, so before we start round two,

we're going to talk about your movie. Your new movie, Normal, congratulations. Thanks. You play a sheriff who works on temp contracts, roams around from town to town, filling in, when they need a sheriff for a little bit. He gets a gig in this town called Normal, which, I mean, you're just asking for it

if you name a town normal. What does he think he's walking into? Quiet town, not much going on. He's going to do his job and leave. Nothing is going to happen. He's got time to daydream and contemplate the mistakes of his life and his lonely, existentially bereft status, state. And that's what he thinks he's walking into.

And he's actually trying to preserve that. He's actually actively not thinking about the various clues and things that are around him that tell him something is amiss in this town. I mean, they're all my favorite elements of a good movie. You got a bank heist. You got some Yakuza, some Japanese mafia. You got yourself some Henry Winkler. Yeah. We got Henry Winkler.

That's what we got. Derek Kolstad wrote this movie. He wrote John Wick. He wrote Nobody. And he writes action films. You know, in comedy, I made fun of the tropes of action films. I ridiculed those and I laughed at them. But action films are, you know, on some level, they're mythic.

They're not real at all. But what they're doing for the audience and for the story is, They're giving the hero something to fight against that is worthy of that much rage and violence. So you need to create a purely evil thing or have that, whether it's, you know, an evil mob boss or whatever it is, it's got to be something that's worthy. Because we live in our world that we know is all gray area. And we know as we go through life, we can get rageful and angry, but probably that person that were rageful and angry at does not deserve our rage or our anger. They probably are a human like us.

And if the longer you live, the more you know that that's true and they have weaknesses and they've challenges and they've been hurt and they did something to us that they may not even be aware of how much it hurt us. And so there's no place for us to put our anger that deserves our anger. But in a movie, you can invent a bad guy or you can borrow one from the world that is conceived or perceived as a, you know, conceptually pure evil creation. And then it's worthy of this violence that you get to act out in a movie. So I like that my movies try to start in the real world with the most real tensions around the character. In the case of nobody, he and his wife are, you know, there's tension there, which can happen when you've got kids and all your life is just a scheduling and you both work.

And you can get, you know, distant and tense. and then he gets to take all of his frustrations of life and then is delivered unto him by Derek Kulstad, this pure evil, in that case, Russian mobster, who is the worst guy ever. And he deserves me angry as a release. He deserves my rage. They're very different characters.

The nobody films is a completely different hero. and character than Ulysses in normal. But there is this through line in which you make these people whole. They are vulnerable men, they are wounded men, and they can also kick ass. I could not play the other kind of action hero, which is the kind you're more used to seeing, which is the Superman, the Superman who is, you know, unstoppable and absolutely unquestion. questionably, the best fighter on screen. I can't play that guy.

I can't pretend to bring that guy to the screen, and it's okay. Yeah. Okay, we're into round two. These are insights, Bob. One, two, or three? One. When have you been in over your head? Oh, many times, many, many times.

Is there a specific instance? I guess the question you're asking is, when have I been in over my head and not pulled myself up out of the hole? Because I was in over my head on Better Call Saul, and I was in over my head on nobody, and I was in over my head on nobody, too. And I was, you know, I mean... No, I don't think it's a question about failure.

I think those are interesting, too, because if that's your modus operandi, that you're always... Yeah, putting myself in a place over my head. Yeah. Yeah. And that's intentional. It is very common for me to do that. You know, it's not so much intentional as, look, I don't want to look like an ass.

I don't want to do something that I can't do in front of everybody and then look terrible. But I don't want to do that less than most people. In other words, other people have a strong. sense of protecting their dignity than I do. Look, I trained for two years to do nobody. I really wanted to do the screenfighting. Yeah, yeah. And I trained in a stunt gym, and in the stunt gym, there are other stunt teams working.

So in other words, I'm in a corner with, at the time, my trainer, who still trains me, Daniel Bernhardt, one of the great stunt actors in the world. and he's trained me for years now. But for a year and a half, I couldn't do credible screen fighting. For a year and a half, that's a long time to be in a room with the professionals right over there being professional. But so you're over your head, you're training for a year and a half. I guess you don't have doubts because you're just like these guys have made it. No, I do have doubts.

You do have doubts. But also just the bottom line, if I do it and it's as embarrassing as I think it could be, who cares? I was never supposed to be an action hero. I'm a comedy writer. I'll go write more comedy. Right, right. Your identity is not wrapped up in being a successful action hero. By the way, my identity, and this is arguable, but my identity is not wrapped up in me being a comedy guy.

worthy or respected. Really? Like, why is that even part of my identity? How is that, you know, part of your identity? What is your identity wrapped up in? Just a guy doing shit. Okay. Well, you never go fail with that.

Just the guy who does stuff and does his best. Yeah. And my identity is wrapped up and being a dad. Yeah. I mean, you know, that's how I, that's number one. Now my kids are older, and to some great extent, they don't want a dad. I mean, really, they're great. But for most of my life, most of the last 30 years, that was what I was wanting to be, trying to be, and being.

Yeah. So that's something I don't want to be embarrassed at. Yeah. But acting for, I mean, look, you know, you don't want to be embarrassed. You don't want to pursue that. you want to do a great job, but I'm more willing to risk looking dumb than most people. And don't forget, I started in comedy where looking dumb is kind of awesome. Looking dumb is often the pursuit, you know.

It's very clever of you to get good at that early in your career. I mean, really? Yeah. Yeah. This is bulwark against judgment. It can be, I think. It can help you. That was interesting.

Next one. One, two, or three. Three. What makes you irrationally defensive? Irrationaly defensive. Oh, my wife critiques me for eating the same thing at restaurants that I had the last time I was there. Fascinating. Because she has this thing about you got to order a different thing every time.

And I'm like, she does that everywhere. Like, by the way, I love going to Ireland and hiking. And I always go back to the same town. She's like, I'm not going. I've already been there. I'm like, you were there once for two days. So you know it, like the back of your hand? Isn't it great to know a place?

Isn't it great to go to a restaurant and get the thing that you know you're going to love? What's wrong with that? And she's... She wants to... She's just... She's just sucking the... marrow out of life. She just wants... Yeah, I mean, is there...

But there's sucking the marrow out of life is going back and enjoying this thing that you love. That's also sucking the marrow out of life. Ordering marrow, bone marrow. If that's what you love... Then order it every time. I'm just saying, I think there's a joy to be found in familiarity that you can make something out of that, too. I get you.

Yeah. You know, and I get defensive about that, as you can see. Yeah. Watch out. I was just going out. Two. Two. Two.

Two. Two. Okay. How big a role does fear play in your life? Well, it should play a bigger role. We talked about risk earlier. I think I have, I don't know what my, how this. I wonder if a psychologist would have like a term for what I am and how fear plays on me,

which is I say, yes, I'll do something that I should be afraid of. And then I go to it. I get to work on it. And then fear kind of creeps in long after I've said, I'll do it. I'll jump on. I'll go do that thing. I'll go out here. I'll do whatever that crazy thing is.

Fear enters into it late. Now I'm in trouble. Now I'm already there. Now I'm doing it. And fear lingers and kind of seeps in everywhere and stresses me out. And I don't want to look at it or acknowledge it, but it's there fucking me up. So it's a weird thing. I still haven't figured that one out.

I think in general I got the good end of the deal on all that. because it means I've tried things. You know, Broadway, doing Glengarry, Glenn Ross on Broadway, as a play I knew I wanted to do, I was thrilled to be invited to do it. Scary, though, I imagine. But the fear of it, the scary part, didn't hit me until I'm doing it.

And I'm on Broadway. And it's, you know, and it's sort of lingered for weeks and weeks. And in the end, I did. did it. I had a great time. I got nominated for a Tony. I feel confident now after, you know, four months doing that on stage. And I'm excited to do more Broadway at some point if I get the opportunity or just more theater. And so may I ask you about your heart attack? Because it seems like that would be very scary. And it would have, you had a heart attack when you were on the set of better call Saul. And it seemed like it would provoke changes in one's life that you could either

be very fearful and like, are you going to be around as long as you wanted to be? Or you could just completely look at it in a different way and just say, I only have so many days in this world. And so I'm just going to live every second and take all the risks. I didn't have the experience that a lot of people have where they see their life flash before their eyes or they have some kind of slideshow of their regrets or something. Or I didn't meet anyone who said, do you want to go back? I didn't look back and see myself on the floor. I basically woke up. I mean, I did wake up the next day after getting two stents, but I don't remember any of that recuperative week in the hospital.

or I don't remember the incident itself. I can only picture it by having talked to Ray Seahorn and Patrick Fabian, who were right there when it happened, or the various people who gathered around from the cast and crew who were very affected, very traumatized some of them by witnessing it. There was very little trauma for me, emotional trauma. What there was was there was this lingering joy that I felt upon sort of resuming consciousness a week later that stuck with me for a couple of weeks, but that I also could feel was going away and would go away, but that I remember thinking, I have to remember this. I have to try to live this way. I have to try to be this, see the world this way. But this feeling of the world being pretty magical and beautiful and astounding, a marvel, a marvel to look at.

And I remember thinking, this is the best, and this is how you should feel. This is what life is. This is life. It's weird. It's like being, it's like having that. revelation people talk about when they do various psychedelic drugs, but being, but not being on drugs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and not being.

Transcendence. Yes, and not being, not with your eyes closed. You're like, I was living. I was doing things. I was living my life. Yeah. But feeling that the whole time. Yeah.

The other thing, of course, is the simple truth of you're going to die. And it's very hard to, sometimes it's hard for. us. I mean, we look out these eyes and we don't see ourselves getting older and we don't, in our mind, we're young, we're just this energy that just is moving at the same pace with the same, you know, resources as ever. And it's just not true. And having that experience is like getting slapped hard on the side of the head going, no, no, no, pay attention. And this ends. And there's things that you promise yourself.

Bucket list, you could call it. And they could be bucket list things like I'm going to climb Machu Picchu. Or they could be, I'm going to live slower and more consciously. And you've got to get around to those things. And you cannot put them off. You cannot put them off. You know, you can't. It's the last round.

One, two, three. You choose. Where do you feel most free, number one? Where do I feel most free? I get a, after working hard on any project, it's tied to a sense of accomplishment, and that's tied to the childhood I had and my mother and the degree to which, you know, achievement or not achievement, but work was the value. of life. What can I contribute? What can I get done was how she lived her life? You know,

utilitarian making, you know, getting stuff done. So when I've finished a project, whatever that is, and that feeling of accomplishment leads to a feeling of freedom that lasts for a short while, maybe even a little bit longer, but I need to have unburdened myself. and achieved something to feel relaxed and free in the world and worthy of enjoying that freedom. One truth. Two. What's something you've come to peace with? Oh, not much.

I love comedy. Comedy inspired me to be in show business, and I wrote it and thought about it and worked on it. and I always knew that I just loved it and that it made me happy, but that there were so many people close to me who were a great deal funnier and more fun to watch than myself. And whether that was Chris Farley or David Cross, I could, the list is long. It didn't bother me. make me mad, but I've come to peace with the fact that my energy and my countenance probably belong in drama better.

Like they're more effective there. Probably my earnestness, which there's something about comedy where it's not that you should be, it's not that earnestness helps there too, but there's a level of my own apparent earnestness that kind of hurts my ability to be as funny as some of the people I've I've been around and worked with. And that dings me a little in comedy. So I just, that's all. I've come to peace with the fact that however much I may enjoy doing comedy, I am more effective in drama. Does that make you sad at all? Or it's just the way it is? No, no, no, no, no. I never wanted to be the funniest guy.

I just wanted to be in comedy. But I think that awareness of like, as much as I love it, as much as I want to do it, and as much as I've done it and done fine, it's just, you know, God said, no, no, no, no, stop with that. Go over here because this is where if you want to perform, and I do like to perform, you should be over on this other stage. We have one last question, Bob Odenkirk. One, two, three. Number one.

How have your feelings about God changed over time? You know, I don't want to bum anybody out about religion, but I was raised very, you know, staunchly Catholic. My mom was, you know, deep believer. and I've just struggled with the idea of God, especially as discussed by most human beings, which always sounds like you're describing a person. And so then, yeah, it hasn't changed much. I think that my idea,

of, you know, any of that stuff is that life, all of life is connected and it's, you know, it's got a beautiful side to it that we have to find and make the most of and help each other to find. And that's nothing more than that. Are you okay that it seems unwelcome? resolved to you that there is like an unknowableness about that whole idea. I'm sure on my deathbed I'll be calling for the priest to give me last right. But, yeah, otherwise I am. We end the show the same way every time.

Okay. With a trip in our memory time machine. In the memory time machine, you revisit one moment from your past. It's not a moment you want to change anything about. it's just a moment you'd like to linger in a little longer. What moment do you choose? Sitting on my friend's, the hood of my friend's car with a beer in my hand, 14 years old, and I heard the news that day that my dad left was gone.

How'd you hear? My mom told me. I was as happy as I had ever been. Bob Odenkirk, you can see. him in the new movie Normal. It is out April 16th. Bob, thank you so much. Thank you. If you like this episode, go back and check out my conversation with Seth Myers. He was similarly reflective about how his show business career didn't unfold quite as he expected, and when he learned about leaning into his best skills. This episode was produced by Alicia Zhang and Lee Hale.

It was edited by Dave Blanchard and mastered by Jimmy Keely. Wildcard's executive producer is Yolanda Sanweni and our theme music is by Romteen Arablewee. You can reach out to us at wildcard at npr.org. We're going to shuffle the deck and be back with more next week. Talk to you then.