Bob Odenkirk is finally opening up — in vivid, unsettling detail — about the near-fatal heart attack that brought production on Better Call Saul to a complete halt back in 2021. The two-time Emmy Award-winning actor and writer sat down with The Times U.K. while promoting the overseas release of his action-comedy Normal, and what he shared was nothing short of chilling.
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The Moment Everything Went Wrong on Set
It was the middle of pandemic-era filming for the final season of the beloved Breaking Bad prequel when Lucky Hank star Bob Odenkirk suddenly collapsed on the New Mexico set. Co-stars Rhea Seehorn and Patrick Fabian rushed to his side in a panic — but due to COVID-era social distancing protocols, the situation spiraled into dangerous confusion almost immediately.
“I went down and Rhea and Patrick grabbed me and they were screaming, but [the crew members who noticed] thought they were laughing,” Odenkirk recalled. “So there were delays in reacting because we were all so far apart from each other.”
Those precious seconds of confusion could have cost him his life.
Making matters worse, when the on-set medic finally arrived, the situation took an even more alarming turn. According to Odenkirk, the medic had never performed CPR — an almost unbelievable detail that underscores just how close this moment came to becoming a tragedy.
“The First Memory I Have Is Leaving the Hospital”
Odenkirk says he has absolutely no memory of the incident itself — no dramatic life-flashing-before-his-eyes moment, no tunnel of light, no out-of-body experience.
“A lot of people get that wonderful reel of film of their life, or they have a person who says, ‘Do you want to go back?'” he said. “None of that for me. The first memory I have is leaving the hospital a week after I got there.“
What he does know came secondhand — from the people who watched it happen. “I was gone. I turned gray,” he recounted, describing what others told him when he finally woke up days later.
A Warning He Knew About — But Waited On
Perhaps the most sobering part of Odenkirk’s account is that this didn’t come entirely out of nowhere. As he previously revealed to The New York Times Magazine in 2022, a doctor had informed him back in 2018 that he had plaque buildup in his heart. On medical advice, he took a wait-and-see approach.
For years, everything seemed fine — until one of those pieces of plaque broke loose.
The morning after his collapse, Odenkirk underwent a stent procedure to fix the blockage — notably, without open-heart surgery. He has since overhauled his diet and been placed on prescription medication to manage his heart health going forward.
Back on Set — and Grateful to Be Alive
Deadline first reported Odenkirk’s collapse in late July 2021. Within 24 hours, his representatives confirmed he was in stable condition following what was described as a “heart-related incident.” Just over a month later, in September 2021, he was back on the New Mexico set, resuming filming on the final season of Better Call Saul.
And when he returned — to the show, to his life, to the world — something had genuinely shifted in him.
“That was such a gift, to experience a few weeks where I felt that way about my presence in the world,” Odenkirk said. “I felt just very, very delighted and engaged.“
For a man who plays one of television’s most calculating survivors, it turns out the most defining moment of Bob Odenkirk’s career had nothing to do with a script — and everything to do with simply making it through the day.