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Bob Odenkirk recalls heart attack on set of ‘Better Call Saul’: “I was gone. I turned grey”
“A lot of people get that wonderful reel of film of their life,” he said. “None of that for me”
Bob Odenkirk has looked back on the time he suffered a heart attack while on the set of Better Call Saul in 2021.
- READ MORE: ‘Breaking Bad’ creator Vince Gilligan wants to change the world with ‘Pluribus’
He played the character Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman in the series, as well as in Breaking Bad, for 11 seasons from 2008-2022, and, in July 2021, collapsed after suffering a heart attack while filming the show’s sixth and final season.
In a recent interview with The Times, Odenkirk looked back on that day, and said some of the cast and crew were slow to react because the medical episode wasn’t immediately obvious.
“I went down, and Rhea [Seehorn] and Patrick [Fabian] grabbed me and they were screaming, but [the crew members who noticed] thought they were laughing,” the actor recalled. “So there were delays in reacting because we were all so far apart from each other.”
“I was gone. I turned grey,” Odenkirk continued. “Eventually, the on-set medic showed up, and he didn’t know what to do. He’d never done CPR.”
After being transported to a local hospital, the Breaking Bad alum was treated without surgery, and later took to social media to share news with fans. “Hi. It’s Bob,” he posted on X/Twitter at the time. “Thank you. To my family and friends who have surrounded me this week.
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“And for the outpouring of love from everyone who expressed concern and care for me. It’s overwhelming. But I feel the love and it means so much.”
He went on to tell The Times that he has very little recollection of the health scare. “A lot of people get that wonderful reel of film of their life, or they have a person who says, ‘Do you want to go back?’ None of that for me,” he said. “The first memory I have is leaving the hospital a week after I got there.”
Despite the scare, Odenkirk said he was able to better appreciate life after the heart attack, and described the recovery period as “such a gift”, explaining: “I felt just very, very delighted and engaged.”
Peter Gould, co-creator of Better Call Saul, previously said that he and the showrunners weren’t sure whether the show would continue following Odenkirk’s heart attack.
He said at the time: “The doctors said [Odenkirk] needs to sit in a room lit by candlelight and he needs time to recover. Honest to God, we didn’t know if we were going to have a show or if we were going to finish it. And it felt so completely irrelevant, because it’s when you realise it’s just a fucking piece of entertainment.”
He continued: “We were ready to dump the whole thing. I mean, I wasn’t thinking about that. It’s too complicated. It was too big to really kind of think it through. But I’m sure somebody deep in the bowels of Sony had to start doing some calculations about what kind of loss they’d have to take, and thank God it didn’t happen.”
Odenkirk had also spoken about the heart attack back in 2022, saying that “if nobody had been there, I’d have been dead in a few minutes.”
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Bob Odenkirk has looked back on the time he suffered a heart attack while on the set of Better Call Saul in 2021.
- READ MORE: ‘Breaking Bad’ creator Vince Gilligan wants to change the world with ‘Pluribus’
He played the character Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman in the series, as well as in Breaking Bad, for 11 seasons from 2008-2022, and, in July 2021, collapsed after suffering a heart attack while filming the show’s sixth and final season.
In a recent interview with The Times, Odenkirk looked back on that day, and said some of the cast and crew were slow to react because the medical episode wasn’t immediately obvious.
“I went down, and Rhea [Seehorn] and Patrick [Fabian] grabbed me and they were screaming, but [the crew members who noticed] thought they were laughing,” the actor recalled. “So there were delays in reacting because we were all so far apart from each other.”
“I was gone. I turned grey,” Odenkirk continued. “Eventually, the on-set medic showed up, and he didn’t know what to do. He’d never done CPR.”
After being transported to a local hospital, the Breaking Bad alum was treated without surgery, and later took to social media to share news with fans. “Hi. It’s Bob,” he posted on X/Twitter at the time. “Thank you. To my family and friends who have surrounded me this week.
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“And for the outpouring of love from everyone who expressed concern and care for me. It’s overwhelming. But I feel the love and it means so much.”
He went on to tell The Times that he has very little recollection of the health scare. “A lot of people get that wonderful reel of film of their life, or they have a person who says, ‘Do you want to go back?’ None of that for me,” he said. “The first memory I have is leaving the hospital a week after I got there.”
Despite the scare, Odenkirk said he was able to better appreciate life after the heart attack, and described the recovery period as “such a gift”, explaining: “I felt just very, very delighted and engaged.”
Peter Gould, co-creator of Better Call Saul, previously said that he and the showrunners weren’t sure whether the show would continue following Odenkirk’s heart attack.
He said at the time: “The doctors said [Odenkirk] needs to sit in a room lit by candlelight and he needs time to recover. Honest to God, we didn’t know if we were going to have a show or if we were going to finish it. And it felt so completely irrelevant, because it’s when you realise it’s just a fucking piece of entertainment.”
He continued: “We were ready to dump the whole thing. I mean, I wasn’t thinking about that. It’s too complicated. It was too big to really kind of think it through. But I’m sure somebody deep in the bowels of Sony had to start doing some calculations about what kind of loss they’d have to take, and thank God it didn’t happen.”
Odenkirk had also spoken about the heart attack back in 2022, saying that “if nobody had been there, I’d have been dead in a few minutes.”
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