Bob Odenkirk Shares His Experience of a Heart Attack While Filming ‘Better Call Saul’
Bob Odenkirk recently opened up about his near-fatal heart attack, an incident that occurred while filming the final season of Better Call Saul.
In a conversation with The Times during the promotion of his new action-comedy film Normal, the two-time Emmy-winning writer and actor detailed the health scare, which took place amid the pandemic.
“I went down, and Rhea [Seehorn] and Patrick [Fabian] grabbed me and they were screaming, but the crew thought they were laughing,” Odenkirk recalled. “So there were delays in reacting because we were all so far apart from each other.”
He elaborated on the severity of the situation, stating, “I was gone. I turned gray,” based on what others told him after he regained consciousness in the hospital a week later. He noted that the on-set medic arrived but was unprepared for the emergency, having never performed CPR.
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The former Saturday Night Live cast member mentioned that he has no recollection of the incident itself: “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. The first memory I have is leaving the hospital a week after I got there.”
Following this traumatic experience, Odenkirk expressed gratitude for his life: “That was such a gift, to experience a few weeks where I felt that way about my presence in the world. I felt just very, very delighted and engaged.”
Odenkirk previously discussed this near-fatal event in an interview with The New York Times Magazine in 2022, sharing that he learned about plaque buildup in his heart in 2018 and had taken a wait-and-see approach after consulting a doctor. He explained that everything was stable until “one of those pieces of plaque broke up.” The following morning, he underwent a stent procedure and has since adopted a healthier diet and medication regimen.
