Now that s'all good, man, Bob Odenkirk is detailing his near-death experience on the set of Better Call Saul.
The actor in a New York Times profile reflected on suffering a heart attack while working on the Breaking Bad prequel's final season last year. "I'd known since 2018 that I had this plaque buildup in my heart," Odenkirk said, explaining that one doctor told him he should start on medication while another told him he could wait. He ended up waiting, but then "one of those pieces of plaque broke up," Odenkirk told the Times. After shooting a scene, he says he went to "play the Cubs game and ride my workout bike, and I just went down," adding that co-star Rhea Seehorn "said I started turning bluish-gray right away."
The Times described Odenkirk laying "without a pulse" until his co-stars screamed for a medic, and the show's health safety supervisor and an assistant director hooked him up to an automated defibrillator. The actor was then rushed to the hospital, where doctors "knocked out that plaque and left stents in two places," Odenkirk explained, though he noted this is based on what others have told him and he has no memory of it himself.
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"That's its own weirdness," Seehorn told the Times. "You didn't have a near-death experience — you're told you had one."
Odenkirk received an outpouring of support when news of his heart attack was reported last July, and he was back on the show's set by September.
"I am doing great," he tweeted in August. "I've had my very own It's A Wonderful Life week of people insisting I make the world slightly better. Wow! Thank you, I love everyone right now but let's keep expectations reasonable!"
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