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Bob Odenkirk says his daughter helped him remember after his heart attack in 2021 left him with no memory for a week.
The “Breaking Bad” actor told Michael Rosenbaum on his “Inside of You” podcast that the heart attack he suffered while filming “Better Call Saul” was all the more “dangerous” because he was “far away” from the set during Covid protocols and “all the people who would hear someone screaming were across the floor of a giant studio.”
He said everyone initially thought his castmates Rhea Seehorn and Patrick Fabian were laughing.
Odenkirk explained that he was walking over to an exercise bike and told Seehorn, “‘I don’t feel so good,’ and then I turned gray and worse things happened.”
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Bob Odenkirk with his daughter Erin Odenkirk in 2023. (Nathan Congleton/NBC)
He said his family was with him the next day when he went into surgery and every day in the hospital after, but he has no memory of anything until a week later.
“My daughter made this dry-erase board that said what happened to me so that I would wake up and see this dry-erase board that: heart, you know, attack and then to the hospital and who’s visited me and who’s in town and what day it is because I never had a memory that whole week.”
Every day that week he said he was asking: “‘Where are we? Why are you guys at the hospital?'”
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Odenkirk said there’s a funny video that was shot by his wife, Naomi, in the hospital that was included in his upcoming documentary “Bob & David Climb Machu Picchu” where his kids ask him after his surgery if he knows why he’s there.
“And I’m like ‘Cause I heard you guys are here,’” he revealed. “It’s really funny. It’s really, it’s crazy what your brain does. ‘How did you get here?’ ‘I drove here.’ You know, like your brain makes up a story about what is going on that suits you.”
Bob Odenkirk with the cast of “Better Call Saul” in 2023. (Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic)
He said he kept telling his family the same thing for a week.
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Joking that he got “ripped off,” Odenkirk said that he didn’t see a white light or get to have his life flash before his eyes.
“And I’ve talked to people who’ve had that, by the way,” he said. “Those experiences are incredible.”
Odenkirk added that “remembering how it felt to come out of that moment to realize the life that I have, the wonderful things that I have in my world, and how wonderful the world can be — really kind of is, and I can reconnect with that just by telling that story, and so that’s a great thing and maybe it helped — maybe — with the whole awareness of limited time.”
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He admitted it’s hard to counteract that feeling of “’I’m going to live forever. What movies do I want to make in 30 years?’”
Bob Odenkirk said it’s hard to get over the idea that you’ll live forever. (Randy Holmes/Disney)
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“‘Hey man,’” he said he tells himself, “‘you are not making any movies in 30 years. You’re not making them in 10 years. You’re going to be cooked and done. And so, what do you want to do? And how much time do you have left? And how are you going to use it?'”
The “Better Call Saul” star said it’s hard to look in the mirror and go: “‘I’m 63, you know, my dad lived to 56, you know, I mean, what are you doing with your time? How are you going to use it? How are you going to do the most with it?’”
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He clarified he wasn’t talking about work.
“Work is great, and work is really great if you get to do what we do, but also, you got to try to get some dimension in yourself and in your life.”