Better Call Saul Star Bob Odenkirk Reveals On-Set Heart Attack That Almost Killed Him—“I Wasn’t Breathing!” ( Photo Credit – Instagram )
Advertisement
Bob Odenkirk didn’t just collapse on the Better Call Saul set. He flatlined. In what could’ve been his final moment, the Emmy-nominated actor went down during a regular shoot day in New Mexico and by his own words, if not for his crew’s fast hands and clear heads, he’d be gone.
“I went down on one knee, and then I went all the way down. I guess I said, ‘I don’t feel very good,’” Odenkirk recalled in an interview with Radio Times (reported by The Guardian). What followed was chaos, CPR, and three defibrillator shocks. The show’s health officer had to run to her car to grab a defibrillator while the crew jumped in, performing CPR on him before the shocks brought him back.
Bob Odenkirk’s Scariest Scene Didn’t Happen on Camera
The moment wasn’t part of any dramatic scene, but it was easily the most terrifying of the entire series. Odenkirk had just hopped onto the exercise bike he used between takes. He was watching a Cubs game on TV. Then he collapsed, no warning, no buildup. Just silence.
“I wasn’t breathing,” he said. “I mean, if nobody had been there, if they didn’t do that CPR, I’d have been dead in a few minutes.”
His castmates didn’t just watch it happen. Rhea Seehorn and Patrick Fabian ran to his side. They held his head and hand and started shouting at him to stay alive. And it worked. The defibrillator shocks revived him, but Odenkirk said he had no memory of any of it. Not the fall, not the panic, not even the save.
The artery that nearly killed him? He called it “the widowmaker.” And this heart attack happened while shooting a show that, by then, had become a career-defining project and a 98% rated critical darling.
Better Call Saul bowed out after six killer seasons on Netflix, with a finale that even brought back the legends, Walter White and Jesse Pinkman. Saul Goodman went from quirky sidekick to one of TV’s deepest, most layered characters. But while fans were hyped, Odenkirk was still wrapping his head around something bigger, how close he came to not making it to the end.
“I’ve been doing it for so long and it’s such a part of my life that I don’t think I’ve fully accepted that it’s over,” he said.
Because for Bob Odenkirk, living to tell this story was already the wildest plot twist of all.
