MOVIE NEWS – Bob Odenkirk has told how close he came to death after suffering a heart attack on the set of Better Call Saul.

If Bob Odenkirk hadn’t tried his hand at action movies, he might not be here today. 2021 was a big year for the popular actor-screenwriter, with the release of his new action film, Nobody, in March to great acclaim. Fans loved the actor’s unexpected emergence in the genre. Months later, he was filming the sixth and final season of Better Call Saul, ending Saul Goodman’s journey.

In July, Bob Odenkirk suffered a heart attack while filming the final episodes of the Breaking Bad spinoff

The actor spoke about the terrifying experience on The Howard Stern Show and said how lucky he feels to be alive. Several vital factors worked in his favour to increase his chances of survival. Most importantly, as Bob Odenkirk details, he was not alone at the time. When Odenkirk collapsed on the set, he received medical attention very quickly, and it was the use of a defibrillator that saved Odenkirk’s life.

“I would’ve been dead if somebody hadn’t immediately screamed and gotten someone there to give me CPR. CPR saved my life… [Our health officer] had an AED in her car. Those are defibrillators. We didn’t have any of those on the set. After about 12 minutes of CPR, she handed me over to some of the other people who knew CPR well and got the defibrillator. It took three attempts to get me to a rhythm, which is actually a lot… when a defibrillator doesn’t work once, that’s not good, when it doesn’t work a second time, it’s kind of like, forget it. But then they jacked it up a third time and it got me back to a rhythm, and so that was what saved my life, and I had surgery in the morning.”

During their conversation, Howard Stern asks whether Bob Odenkirk’s strain on his body could have contributed to his heart attack. Odenkirk quickly dismisses this theory and explains that, in fact, it was the opposite. Medical professionals have told the actor that getting in such good physical shape because of Nobody actually helped save him.

“In fact, it saved my life… We were talking about Nobody, and one of the things that saved me was, I learned how to work out. Because I was in good shape, you kind of enlarge some of the other vein around your heart if you work out a lot, and I had done that. As a result, I was told that more blood was able to go to my heart during CPR, because these veins were just a little bit bigger from a lot of working out. But, also recovery-wise, I recovered much faster than I think a normal person who wan’t exercising as much would.”

Bob Odenkirk can’t say much about the final season of Better Call Saul, lest he gives away spoilers. However, as he told Stern, he feels the series has a “wonderful” ending and is more connected to Breaking Bad than ever before. How it all continues remains to be seen.

Better Call Saul’s sixth and final season premieres on April 18, 2022.

Source: YouTube