Bob Odenkirk is shedding light onto the heart attack he had while on the set of “Better Call Saul” in 2021.
“I went down and Rhea [Seehorn] and Patrick [Fabian] grabbed me and they were screaming, but [the crew members who noticed] thought they were laughing,” the actor, 63, recalled while speaking with Times of London on Friday. “So there were delays in reacting because we were all so far apart from each other.”
“I was gone. I turned gray,” Odenkirk recounted. “Eventually the on-set medic showed up and he didn’t know what to do. He’d never done CPR.”
After being transported to a local hospital, the “Breaking Bad” alum was treated without surgery.
However, Odenkirk has very little recollection of the incident.
“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?’ None of that for me,” he explained to the outlet. “The first memory I have is leaving the hospital a week after I got there.”
Since the health scare, Odenkirk has had a new lease on life.
“That was such a gift, to experience a few weeks where I felt that way about my presence in the world,” the “Nobody” star gushed. “I felt just very, very delighted and engaged.”
In July 2021, after the incident, Odenkirk hopped online to confirm he had a heart attack while filming the sixth season of the hit AMC show.
“Hi. It’s Bob,” the Emmy winner tweeted at the time. “Thank you. To my family and friends who have surrounded me this week.”
Odenkirk added, “And for the outpouring of love from everyone who expressed concern and care for me. It’s overwhelming. But I feel the love and it means so much.”
A follow-up tweet noted, “I’m going to be ok thanks to Rosa Estrada and the doctors who knew how to fix the blockage without surgery.”
“I’m going to take a beat to recover but I’ll be back soon,” he promised.
One month later, Odenkirk gave a positive update to followers.
“I am doing great,” he tweeted in August 2021.
“I’ve had my very own ‘It’s a wonderful life’ week of people insisting I make the world slightly better,” Odenkirk divulged — referencing the Frank Capra film where George Bailey sees what the world would have turned out like if he was never born. “Wow! Thank you, I love everyone right now but let’s keep expectations reasonable!”
One year later, during a “Sunday Today” interview, Odenkirk revealed just how serious the medical emergency was.
“My widow-maker artery was completely blocked,” he said in the 2022 sit-down. “That’s why it’s called the widow-maker ’cause you die when that happens, but I went down.”
“I was not present for any of it,” Odenkirk shared. “I’m told it was a pretty shocking day on set, and traumatizing for all my costars and crew members and people I love very much who love me and stood by my side and then went to the hospital with me.”
In 2023, he told Yahoo!Life that the heart attack “didn’t affect” him “much for a long time.”
“I had a strange kind of upbeat energy literally the next day, and every day,” Odenkirk detailed. “It was because I had, like, a mind wipe every night.”
He reiterated that his “ability to even think about what had happened” was compromised.
“I needed my brain to get back on a normal state,” Odenkirk mused. It’s something I think about every day.”
