Bob Odenkirk achieved worldwide fame as the fast-talking lawyer Saul Goodman from Breaking Bad, but he initially turned down the chance to star in his own spin-off, Better Call Saul. The actor, now 63, snubbed the role because it would take him away from his family – however, his children persuaded him to accept the part that would become his biggest.
Family First
Odenkirk said: “I wasn’t going to do it. I wasn’t that intimidated. I should have been because it was a bigger acting role than I’d ever prepared for. It was simply that I had kids at home and so I just said no.” His children, Nathan (then 13) and Erin (then 11), had other ideas. He recalled: “They heard me on the phone saying ‘no.’ I hung up and my son said, ‘Dad, you’re not going to do that show?’ And I said, ‘No, I can’t do it.’ He goes, ‘Well, you’re going to disappoint a lot of people.’ And I said, ‘I’m going to disappoint a lot of strangers. So I don’t really care about them.’ Then he said, ‘Well, some are my friends.’ Anyway, we talked. He said he’d be willing to help out at home.”
Daughter Erin also played a key role, promising to support their mother Naomi Yomtov, who is also Bob’s talent manager. Odenkirk added: “My daughter was 11. And she then talked to me about it too, and said, ‘We’ll help out. We’ll help Mom.’ Of course, Sony thought I was trying to get more money out of them. And they called back the next day and said, ‘OK, we’ll give you this.’ And I was like, ‘What?’ And that’s not why I did that.”
Critical Success and Action Star Reinvention
Better Call Saul became a critical and audience success, earning Odenkirk six Emmy nominations. After the show concluded, he reinvented himself as an action star in Nobody, which opened at number one in 2021. A sequel followed in 2025. Now he stars in Normal, directed by British filmmaker Ben Wheatley. Odenkirk said: “The notion of action was just because I was curious if I could make a feature film on a bigger scale. I enjoy trying something that’s 180 degrees from whatever I just did. Keep yourself awake. Try something really out of the box.”
Early Life and Comedy Roots
Odenkirk grew up in suburban Chicago with six siblings. His father Walter worked in printing and struggled with alcoholism, which influenced Bob to largely avoid alcohol. In his memoir Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama, he wrote: “My dad was rough and too intense, and those were his good qualities.” School gave him little direction; he recalled: “I figured I’d work in forestry. In high school I filled out some kind of career-planning assessment and it said: ‘Go into the forest and don’t come back.’” At Southern Illinois University he studied radio and television, working as a DJ at the campus station.
He credits UK comedy with helping him rise to the top, calling Monty Python his “religion” and also loving The Goodies and The Two Ronnies. He said: “Look, all I ever wanted to do was be in Monty Python. That was my dream.” He met lifelong friend Robert Smigel, who was hired by Saturday Night Live; two years later, at age 25, Odenkirk followed. After SNL, he co-created Mr Show with Smigel, which ran from 1995 to 1998, and later guest-starred on Seinfeld and played a police chief in Fargo (2014).
His role in Breaking Bad came about because creator Vince Gilligan and writer Peter Gould were fans of Mr Show. Odenkirk first watched an episode on a flight to New Mexico and “got it”. What was intended as a guest spot became an ongoing role until the show concluded in 2013. The spin-off Better Call Saul began in 2015, and Odenkirk’s career has since expanded into action films, with Normal being his latest project.
