The ‘Better Call Saul’ Team in The Final Season, Bob Odenkirk’s Heart Attack – The Hollywood Reporter
On Saturday night, It’s better to call Saul appeared last at the annual PaleyFest TV show in Los Angeles, as the AMC hit show was just days away from the start of its sixth and final season. And for this epilogue, star Bob Odenkirk has only one request: growth.
“I’ve always wanted the character to grow and I’ve been campaigning for that for years. My argument with [co-creator] Vince Gilligan believes that sometimes people learn the right lessons from life’s traumas and challenges; they don’t always become Walter White,” said Odenkirk The Hollywood Reporter on the red carpet. “And I’ll leave it to you to find out if that’s what happened.”
It’s better to call Saula prequel to Break, followed Odenkirk’s Jimmy McGill on his journey from childhood attorney to powerful criminal lawyer known as Saul Goodman, who represented Bryan Cranston’s Walter White. And, as was revealed at the event, Cranston and Aaron Paul’s Jesse Pinkman will return at some point in the final season.
With so many years with Saul between the two shows, co-creator and presenter Peter Gould said the finale’s mission was to figure out “where is the right place to leave him and I’m really proud.” We’re excited about what we’ve come up with. I love it and I hope others do too.” And the decision to leave him was not planned many years ago, but only started to come together from last season.
“We don’t know how we’re going to end it until season five, and if you watch season five closely you’ll see the clouds start to part in season five and I won’t say the end but we Gould said. “As it works, we’ve come pretty close, but there’s a lot of nuance that’s been difficult to win this season.”
Upon reading those final scripts, Rhea Seehorn confirmed, “I couldn’t believe the juxtaposition of all the plots and character content they had to do, because Peter said it was the Rubik’s Cube that they were talking about. he has to find out. We were stunned. As a cast, I think we found it to be alternately shocking and devastating and sometimes hilarious. In the end it is very very thought provoking. I found that to be all I wanted as a fan. “
As for his final days on set, Odenkirk said their failure to return hasn’t completely affected him yet, while Gould recalls being “deeply emotional” when he directed the final episode on the day the series ended. end.
“We’ve been through near-death experiences, family deaths, births, marriages, divorces – it’s a journey with everything that can happen in human life, ‘ said Gould. “Little by little, the team is scattered in all directions so it will be a very long, slow and painful goodbye for the group, but I like to think that the more of us we can work together at once. again. After Break I think I will never have such a rewarding, fun and creative experience as Breakand this show for me is also very good, for me maybe even a little better. “
Speaking of near-death experiences, Odenkirk famously suffered a heart attack last July while filming a series in which he and his co-stars – including Jonathan Banks, Giancarlo Esposito, Patrick Fabian, Tony Dalton and Michael Mando , and minus Gilligan – talked about in more detail in the PaleyFest panel.
He began thanking fans for the overwhelming support online (“You treated me like a real angel, which blew my mind when I finally recovered my mind.” ) and describes how he doesn’t remember much of that time, saying, “It was about eight days, eight and a half days of which I don’t have any recollection. And then they come back a little bit every day. “
Banks jumped in declaring, “Bobby is dead. Three times with [defibrillator] ” as Seehorn explains the moment from her perspective, when she and Fabian were filming with Odenkirk 12 hours.
“Thank god he liked us so much that he didn’t go to his trailer because he wouldn’t be here. He was with us and watched a Cubs game and looked like he was going to pass out, looked like he was going to faint and we realized this was actually more of a mistake and started screaming for help,” As a paramedic, she said, an EMT-trained AD and a COVID-19 officer who was formerly a war medic came to his aid. [producer] Melissa Bernstein called his family and they put oxygen on his brain right away and they worked with him until he came back. ”
Odenkirk says doctors have cleaned the area around his heart and he is now “in better shape than I’ve been in a while.”
“I know we rank on social media as a mostly evil place, but at this point in this chapter of my life it’s a place of incredible warmth and love and support. surprised and I couldn’t believe it,” he added. “It blew my mind and it still is and that will resonate with me for the rest of my life.” And nine months later, he seems to have taken a softer approach to the experience; When asked to describe the final season in a few words, Odenkirk said, “Heart stopped.”
It’s better to call Saul The sixth season premieres on AMC April 18.
