Berwyn’s Bob Odenkirk is opening up in chilling detail about the terrifying moments surrounding the near-fatal heart attack he suffered while filming Better Call Saul in 2021.
Speaking to The Times, the 63-year-old actor recalled collapsing on set as co-stars Rhea Seehorn and Patrick Fabian rushed to help him, while nearby crew members initially mistook the chaos for joking around.
“I went down and Rhea and Patrick grabbed me and they were screaming,” Odenkirk said. “But they thought they were laughing.”
According to Odenkirk, those first moments created dangerous delays as people struggled to realize the severity of the situation. “So there were delays in reacting because we were all so far apart from each other,” he added.
Then things became even more frightening. “I was gone. I turned grey.”
Odenkirk also revealed that the set medic who arrived had never performed CPR before. Eventually, the actor was rushed to a hospital where doctors treated him without surgery after discovering a total blockage in what’s commonly known as the “widow-maker” artery.
And remarkably, Odenkirk says he remembers almost none of it. “A lot of people get that wonderful reel of film of their life,” he said. “None of that for me.”
“The first memory I have is leaving the hospital a week after I got there.”
The incident occurred in July 2021 while Odenkirk was filming the final season of the critically acclaimed AMC series that evolved from cult favorite spinoff into one of television’s most celebrated dramas.
At the time, Odenkirk later confirmed publicly that he had suffered a heart attack and credited medical staff for saving his life. “I’m going to be ok,” he wrote shortly afterward on social media. “I’m going to take a beat to recover but I’ll be back soon.”
And he was.
Odenkirk eventually returned to complete the final season of “Better Call Saul,” delivering what many critics considered some of the strongest work of his career.
But the experience clearly reshaped him personally. “That was such a gift,” Odenkirk said of surviving the ordeal. “I felt just very, very delighted and engaged.”
In later interviews, the actor revealed that doctors informed him his widow-maker artery had been “completely blocked,” a type of cardiac event that is frequently fatal.
“That’s why it’s called the widow-maker,” he said during a 2022 television appearance. “You die when that happens.”
Thankfully for Odenkirk, the people around him refused to let that happen.
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