Bob Odenkirk Reveals He’s Doing His Own Stunts 4 Years After Heart Attack

Four years after suffering a major health scare, Bob Odenkirk is back on the big screen and doing more stunts than ever in the new movie Nobody 2.

“I do everything except when my character flies through the air. They won’t let me do that,” Odenkirk shared on the Thursday, August 14, episode of Today. “And drive crazy. I can drive fast, but once the car goes crazy, then it’s not me. It’s someone else.”

A sequel to the 2021 action thriller Nobody, the sequel follows assassin-turned-family man Hutch Mansell (Odenkirk) as he takes down a group of dangerous criminals while on vacation with his wife, father, and kids.

On Today, Odenkirk shared that he continued to stay in shape after filming the original, especially after suffering a heart attack on the set of Better Call Saul in 2021.

“Training for that first film helped my heart survive that first attack because I was in very good shape, and that helped when CPR happened,” he revealed. “So, I carried on with the training, even though we finished the first film. I carried on with Daniel Bernhardt, the action stunt actor who trained me. I carried on with that right away. I never stopped. And so, I was able to do more interesting and more fighting in this, Nobody 2.”

Today‘s Craig Melvin noted that the first Nobody may have “saved” Odenkirk’s life. “Well, it certainly helped my heart because I have almost no scarring at all after what happened to me, which is very surprising,” the actor replied.

While Odenkirk’s stunt training may have lent itself to his heart attack recovery, he still managed to get injured while filming Nobody 2. “I do hurt myself, but it’s only because I’m a little bit sloppy,” he shared in an interview on Thursday’s third hour of Today. “You know, I came to this late in life. I started training for the first film when I was probably 54 years old, and before that, all I did was, sort of, average kind of workouts that any dad would come up with.”

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He continued, “I still make mistakes, but I’m very well-trained. And the stuntmen around me make sure that I’m safe. That’s their top priority, is to make sure this fool doesn’t get hurt.”

Back in July 2021, news broke that Odenkirk suffered a “heart-related incident” while filming Better Call Saul. Odenkirk later revealed via X that he experienced a “small heart attack,” adding, “But I’m going to be ok thanks to Rosa Estrada and the doctors who knew how to fix the blockage without surgery. Also, AMC and SONYs support and help throughout this has been next-level. I’m going to take a beat to recover but I’ll be back soon.”

Odenkirk opened up about the near-fatal experience in a February 2022 interview with The New York Times. “We were shooting a scene, we’d been shooting all day, and luckily I didn’t go back to my trailer,” he recalled. “I went to play the Cubs game and ride my workout bike, and I just went down.”

© Universal Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection

On-set health and safety supervisors began performing CPR on him not long after he was discovered by his costars Rhea Seehorn and Patrick Fabian.

He was quickly transported to the hospital and underwent surgery for plaque buildup in his heart the next day. At the time, Seehorn told the outlet that Odenkirk had no recollection of the health scare, stating, “That’s its own weirdness. You didn’t have a near-death experience — you’re told you had one.”

Nobody 2, Movie Premiere, Friday, August 15, In Theaters