Last July, Bob Odenkirk suffered a “small heart attack” on the set of Better Call Saul. It wasn’t long before he was back to doing silly bits and filming resumed for the final season, but he came closer to dying than anyone previously realized. “I would have been dead if someone hadn’t immediately screamed and gotten someone there to give me CPR,” he said on Monday’s The Howard Stern Show. “CPR saved my life.”
Odenkirk told host Howard Stern that Better Call Saul‘s on-set health officer, Rosa administered CPR on him for 12 minutes before grabbing a defibrillator from her car. “It took three attempts to get me to [an effective heart] rhythm, which is actually a lot, Howard,” he said. “When the defibrillator doesn’t work once, that’s not good. When it doesn’t work the second time, it’s kind of like forget it. But then they jacked me up to a third time and got me a rhythm.” He also acknowledged the efforts of his co-stars Rhea Seehorn (Kim) and Patrick Fabian (Howard), “who rushed right to my side. Rhea held my head and Patrick held my hand… I turned grey right away and stopped breathing, and they were just yelling and yelling… and then everybody [else] kicked into gear.”
Other variables working in his favor that day included the fact the show had been shooting on set — Rosa didn’t generally accompany the crew on location — and Bob happened to be in great shape at the time after having vigorously trained for his action flick Nobody. “I was told that more blood was able to go to my heart during CPR because [my veins] were just a little bit bigger from a lot of working out,” he said.
You can listen to Odenkirk’s interview above. Better Call Saul returns in April.
(Via The Howard Stern Show)