Better Call Saul's Bob Odenkirk Opens Up About On-Set Heart Attack
Over the summer came startling news out of Albuquerque when it was revealed that Better Call Saul star Bob Odenkirk had suffered a heart attack on the set of the Breaking Bad prequel series. The Emmy winner was rushed to a hospital quickly and was able to release a statement to fans just days later. In a new interview the actor has opened up about what happened that day in ABQ, revealing he'd known for three years that he had "plaque buildup" in his heart and after visiting two different doctors opted to delay treatment which lead to "one of those pieces of plaque" breaking up.
"We were shooting a scene, we'd been shooting all day, and luckily I didn't go back to my trailer," Odenkirk revealed to The New York Times Magazine for a new profile. "I went to play the Cubs game and ride my workout bike, and I just went down. Rhea (Seahorn, his co-star) said I started turning bluish-gray right away." The health safety supervisor and an assistant director arrived eventually on the scene and administered CPR before hooking up Odenkirk to a defibrillator, giving him a shock three times before his heart got back into rhyhtm.
Odenkirk addmitted to the outlet that he has no memory of the event or the fallout surgeries that took place, piecing together the vents from his co-stars and collaborators that were on hand to help.
"That's its own weirdness," Seehorn added. "You didn't have a near-death experience — you're told you had one."
Better Call Saul's sixth and final season will arrive on AMC this year with an all-new teaser trailer revealing that two fan-favorite villains will be making their presence known in the last episodes.
"I really hope we stick the landing," series creator Peter Gould previously said. "People are really tough on series-enders now. It's making me a little nervous… It's very tough to take, in our case it'll be 63 hours roughly of story and then run it to a satisfying conclusion. And then plus we have the Breaking Bad of it. My hair is gonna fall out in the next five seconds talking about it. We'll do our best. I'm excited."
Better Call Saul's sixth batch of episodes will be a super-sized 13-episode season, the biggest yet for the series, bringing the show's total episode count to just one more than Breaking Bad itself.