Nobody Star Bob Odenkirk Doesn’t Miss Saul Goodman

Nobody has had a career quite like Bob Odenkirk. 

It was one thing to go from a comedy writer and performer on SNL in the late ‘80s to his own beloved HBO sketch comedy series, Mr. Show with Bob and David, in the mid-’90s. But to reinvent himself as an equally effective comedic and dramatic actor in his late 40s and 50s — largely due to his roles as Saul Goodman and Jimmy McGill on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul — is something nobody saw coming. The later career twists and turns for the 7-time-Emmy-nominated actor weren’t over yet, as Odenkirk took on yet another challenge that nobody anticipated: action franchise star.

In 2019, Odenkirk starred in and produced Ilya Naishuller’s Nobody right before his 57th birthday, and the actioner about long-retired assassin (aka “auditor”) Hutch Mansell released to strong reviews during COVID in March 2021. The action-thriller took in a box office haul of $57.5 million against a $16 million budget, which was music to the pandemic-stricken industry’s ears at the time. Odenkirk spent years training for the action role, utilizing the same program that John Wick co-directors David Leitch and Chad Stahelski designed in order to turn Keanu Reeves into John Wick.

Thankfully, Odenkirk’s fitness regimen helped save his life when he suffered a near-fatal heart incident on the set of Better Call Saul’s final season in July 2021. Once he received a clean bill of health, he recommitted himself to his rigorous Nobody workouts regardless of his and Universal’s interest in a Nobody 2.

“It was more that you’ve got to exercise when you get older,” Odenkirk tells The Hollywood Reporter. “[David Leitch’s] 87North and [Chad Stahelski’s] 87eleven are two different concerns now, but they lift from every kind of fight tradition, so there will be people at their gyms who do jiu-jitsu, karate, judo and boxing. It just makes for a more entertaining workout.”

In the first Nobody, Odenkirk’s Hutch has to reignite the sleeping assassin within himself after his family was frightened by a botched home invasion. This story point was inspired by a couple break-ins that Odenkirk’s own nuclear family endured over the years. In the now well-received Nobody 2, Hutch, his wife Becca (Connie Nielsen) and their two kids are all leading separate lives and sorely need a vacation to reestablish their familial bond. So Odenkirk once again channeled his real life by having the Mansells travel to a waterpark-centric town à la the Wisconsin Dells that his family of origin twice went to in the ‘70s. 

“The family I grew up in, we went on two vacations in my life. There were seven kids in my family, and we didn’t have enough money to go to Hawaii or Disneyland,” Odenkirk recalls. “So we went to the Wisconsin Dells in a station wagon, and the kids were in the back, sweating and complaining. Of course, the Dells was not as impressive as it is now.”

As a result, Nobody 2 director Timo Tjahjanto combined the thrilling mechanics of Naishuller’s Nobody with elements of National Lampoon’s Vacation. However, the fun and games on the screen had a brief period of concern behind the scenes due to Odenkirk’s various responsibilities as a leading man, uncredited writer and producer.

“There was a point where I was losing a lot of weight. I could tell people were worried, but I feel fine. When you get closer to filming, you do two workouts a day, and when you’re doing that, you’re stressing as well,” Odenkirk says of his then 62-year-old self. “I don’t have a writer’s credit, but I was deep into the writing on these films, especially the second film. So I didn’t go home and have a massage and go to sleep. I went home and worked on the next day’s screenplay.”

At this past Monday’s red carpet premiere, Odenkirk was joined by his Better Call Saul partner in crime, Rhea Seehorn. The dear friends remain supportive of each other’s work, including Seehorn’s highly anticipated upcoming series, Pluribus. Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan, along with co-EP Peter Gould, once took Odenkirk aside on the Bad set to gauge his interest in a spinoff series that would eventually become Better Call Saul. Gilligan then gave Seehorn the same treatment on the Saul set by offering her the chance to lead his very secretive new sci-fi endeavor for Apple TV+. As expected, Odenkirk is hyped to see his friends’ creation.

“I know it’s going to be massive. Massive! It’s going to be the biggest thing, well, since sliced bread, but really since Game of Thrones. I can’t wait,” Odenkirk shares. 

As for Better Call Saul, Odenkirk doesn’t exactly miss playing his triple role of Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman/Gene Takavic. He devoted 14 years of his life to his complicated, multifaceted character, and the slippery sad-clown lawyer was a lot to handle throughout Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. The same goes for Hutch Mansell, but Odenkirk is still keen to make a couple more Nobody films so that he can keep developing the Mansell family’s dynamics.

“Both Hutch Mansell in Nobody and Saul Goodman in Better Call Saul have a lot of impacted frustration inside them. They’re guys who, for different reasons, have pretty big chips on their shoulders, and that’s hard to play after a while,” Odenkirk admits. “You can’t just carry that guy around all the time. So I’m fine with moving on from them both, although I would do more Hutch. I would do a third or fourth [Nobody] film.”

Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Odenkirk also discusses the reason why he had to pump the brakes on Nobody 2, as well as the unsung hero behind his transformation into an action star.

***

The first Nobody came out in March 2021 during COVID, and it did very well by pandemic standards. Did you still have to twist some arms to get the sequel greenlit?

No, not at all. The biggest challenge was finding the right story. (Odenkirk apologetically asks for a brief pause.) My wife had some furniture redone and it weighs a lot. So I didn’t want to watch this guy try to carry it on his own; he could have hurt himself. So thank you for waiting.

Oh, don’t mention it.

We played around with different stories for Nobody 2, and it was hard to find a story that felt right. I kept asking myself, “What is the real reason people liked the first one so much? What is it?” And I didn’t mean the obvious stuff like the fights being good and a little more visceral than what you’re used to seeing. 

At the core of Nobody was this guy, his family and the tensions within it that all seemed authentic. You could almost say that everything up to the bus scene is an independent movie or a Richard Linklater film about a couple coming apart because of a stupidly mishandled home break-in. But then it ramps up into this magical world that only exists in movies. So if the couple were somehow chummy and on good terms again at the end of the first film, how are they now feeling tension again? 

There was a lot of back and forth and a lot of outlines and even a lot of screenplays. [Co-screenwriter] Derek Kolstad and I talked all the way through it, and then all of a sudden, Universal was like, “Okay, we’re going to make it.” And we were actually like, “Well, we haven’t got the script figured out completely.” We definitely had the bones of what you see now, but it wasn’t like, “Ah, now it’s done. Can you please make it?” I didn’t feel that way. 

So we had to get to work and really focus on it, and then we arrived at a script that I thought was good. One of my goals in this story was to not have the first bad guy you meet be the actual bad guy. There’s this middleman, John Ortiz’s Wyatt Martin, who is a mirror of Hutch because Hutch also works for somebody [Colin Salmon’s The Barber]. Are you from the Midwest? Have you been to Wisconsin Dells?

I’m not from the Midwest, but I lived there for a few years and visited the Dells during that time.

The Tommy Bartlett Show, Tommy Bartlett’s [Exploratory], Tommy Bartlett’s everything. [Writer’s Note: Bartlett was a Wisconsin showman whose water-ski show served as a popular tourist attraction at the Dells from 1952 to 2020.] Wyatt Martin is our Tommy Bartlett. He owns the town [and the Tiki Rush waterpark]. He’s the bad guy who’s sitting behind the sheriff’s desk when you meet him, but he’s really under the thumb of [Sharon Stone’s Lendina]. So the first film’s mechanics that I thought really worked for the audience, I wanted to go through a version of those again. [Writer’s Note: Odenkirk met Stone at an awards show and eventually wrote her a note to see if she’d play a James Bond-type baddie.]

Some Odenkirk family misfortune inspired the aforementioned home invasion in the first film, and you previously told me that you tapped into those negative experiences during Hutch’s phenomenal bus fight. Did any Odenkirk family vacation stories work their way into Nobody 2?

Yes, but not my current family. The family I grew up in, we went on two vacations in my life. There were seven kids in my family, and we didn’t have enough money to go to Hawaii or Disneyland. So we went to the Wisconsin Dells in a station wagon, and the kids were in the back, sweating and complaining. Of course, the Dells was not as impressive as it is now. It’s got six waterparks now that are amazing. 

So we wanted to have Hutch take his family to a place [called Plummerville], which, in his mind, is the coolest place [from his childhood]. “You can’t believe it, the waterpark is so huge!” And then his kids, who are 13 and 18, get out of the car and go, “What? This isn’t huge.” And he’s like, “Oh, right,. I was nine when I came here.” The fact is [Plummerville] is just a little rinky-dink for his kids’ ages, but they’re making the best of it. 

We wanted to have that series of disappointments that can happen when you’re a parent and you take your kids on this trip that you’re so excited about doing. The unimpressive waterpark is then closed when you get there, and you even booked the wrong hotel rooms. You didn’t think twice about putting the two kids in the same room. You just weren’t thinking, and you go, “Shit, this is supposed to be fun. Fuck.”

You kept your Nobody training going in between films. Was it less about a potential sequel and more about the fact that it was credited with saving your life on the Better Call Saul set?

No, it was more that you’ve got to exercise when you get older, and it’s a more interesting workout than almost any workout I’ve ever seen anyone do. It involves boxing, sometimes. It involves yoga, sometimes. It involves all these different disciplines. [David Leitch’s] 87North and [Chad Stahelski’s] 87eleven are two different concerns now, but [Dave and Chad] were together at the beginning. They’ve done all the John Wick movies and Deadpool 2. They lift from every kind of fight tradition, so there will be people at their gyms who do jiu-jitsu, karate, judo and boxing. So they steal from all of these different fighting styles, and it just makes for a more entertaining workout.

Did anyone ask you to pace yourself or dial yourself back given your health scare between films? 

Yeah, there was a point where I was losing a lot of weight. And people … I didn’t hear about it directly, but I did eventually. I could tell people were worried, but I feel fine. (Laughs.) When you get closer to filming, you do two workouts a day, and when you’re doing that, you’re stressing as well. Stress drains your brain, it drains your energy and it drains your body of minerals. Did you know that?

I did not.

It does. “And that’s why you should take a multivitamin,” said the old man.

My dad just got on me about this. 

I don’t have a writer’s credit, but I was deep into the writing on these films, especially the second film. So I didn’t go home and have a massage and go to sleep. I went home and worked on the next day’s screenplay: what we were going to actually say and do, and what changed and what didn’t work.

It always amuses me how Daniel Bernhardt keeps dying in these 87North and 87eleven movies and returning as new characters. It’s a great running gag.

Absolutely. There’s a lot of conversation about what facial hair he can have to feign towards the idea that he’s a different human. I love Daniel, and he is the man who trained me to do this. He’s put in so many hours, and I have deep respect and appreciation for his friendship and skills. So I love the guy, and as far as I’m concerned, if I ever get to make another action film, he’s in it. He was here yesterday. We did a workout together.

Do you have another Nobody in you for a proper trilogy?

Well, I genuinely like doing action scenes. They’re fun to invent. They’re actually similar in creative joy to sketch writing. They’re three-to-six minute pieces, generally, and if you do them right, they have a story to them. You should be able to describe a fight with a few words; you shouldn’t say, “And then they fight!” Because then you’re just making a blah action film. 

You should say, “The duck boat fight is a fight where he’s trying not to fight. This is a supremely out of control fight. He’s lost control, completely. He is genuinely out of energy, and he really won’t make it through this.” Each fight should have a character unto itself, and it should have a little bit of a journey, just like a sketch. So I was surprised to find that parallel, and I spent so much of my life writing sketches and loving that form.

So I’d do more [Nobody]. I’d love to do more of it, but I don’t think I’m going to dig right in. I have another action film called Normal that’s coming out [at TIFF 2025], so that’s already in the can. But, right now, I think I want to do some comedy if they’ll let me.

You recently reunited with your Better Call Saul collaborators Vince Gilligan and Rhea Seehorn at San Diego Comic-Con. How much have you let them tell you about their new series Pluribus?

Nothing. I don’t know a damn thing. But I know it’s going to be massive. Massive! It’s going to be the biggest thing, well, since sliced bread, but really since Game of Thrones. You probably know what’s biggest [lately], but probably since Severance. I know Severance, in its way, is a big, big effort. So I think that [Pluribus] is going to be the next big show, and I can’t wait.

Nobody 2 comes out three years to the day since Better Call Saul went off the air. You played that collective character of Jimmy/Saul for 14 years. Do you miss him at all? 

No! He was great, and I enjoyed playing him. Both Hutch Mansell in Nobody and Saul Goodman in Better Call Saul have a lot of impacted frustration inside them. They’re guys who, for different reasons, have pretty big chips on their shoulders, and that’s hard to play after a while. You can’t just carry that guy around all the time. So I’m fine with moving on from them both, although I would do more Hutch. I would do a third or fourth [Nobody] film. 

It would be about the journey of the family and the tensions that change as you move from one chapter to the next. You tell yourself, “This is going to be it now. I’m going to enjoy this chapter of my life and I’m going to be carefree.” (Laughs.) But then you find that it has just as many frustrations and shortcomings as the last chapter.

Earlier this year, you also reunited with your Better Call Saul brother, Michael McKean, on Broadway in Glengarry Glen Ross. Was that new context both strange and interesting after three years together on Saul?

Broadway was a strange experience. It was very unique in its tensions and pressures, but Michael has done it many times. So he was actually a source of calm and confidence and joy because he’s a blast. Nobody got more laughs than Michael McKean in that show. He was so funny, and he’s one of the funniest and best actors in America. God, what a blast it was to be around him for that.

***
Nobody 2 opens Aug. 15 in movie theaters nationwide.