If it wasn’t for Bob Odenkirk trying his hand at action movies, he might not still be here with us today. 2021 was a pretty big year for Odenkirk. In March, his new action film Nobody was released to acclaim, with fans loving the actor’s unexpected left turn into the genre. Months later, he was filming the sixth and final season of Better Call Saul, which will finally bring an end to Saul Goodman’s journey.

In July, Odenkirk suffered a heart attack while filming the Breaking Bad spinoff’s final episodes. Speaking about the frightening experience on The Howard Stern Show, the actor described how lucky he feels to be alive. Many key factors were working in his favor to increase his odds of survival. What’s most important, as Odenkirk details, is that he wasn’t alone at the time. When Odenkirk collapsed on the set, he was very quickly given medical attention, and it was the use of a defibrillator that saved Odenkirk’s life.

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In their conversation, Howard Stern questions if the stress Odenkirk had put on his body may have contributed to his heart attack. Odenkirk is quick to dismiss that theory, explaining that it’s actually the opposite. Medical professionals told the actor that getting into such good physical shape for Nobody actually helped save him.

“I would’ve been dead if somebody hadn’t immediately screamed and gotten someone there to give me CPR. CPR saved my life… [Our health officer] had an AED in her car. Those are defibrillators. We didn’t have any of those on the set. After about 12 minutes of CPR, she handed me over to some of the other people who knew CPR well and got the defibrillator. It took three attempts to get me to a rhythm, which is actually a lot… when a defibrillator doesn’t work once, that’s not good, when it doesn’t work a second time, it’s kind of like, forget it. But then they jacked it up a third time and it got me back to a rhythm, and so that was what saved my life, and I had surgery in the morning.”

“In fact, it saved my life… We were talking about Nobody, and one of the things that saved me was, I learned how to work out. Beacuse I was in good shape, you kind of enlarge some of the other vein around your heart if you work out a lot, and I had done that. As a result, I was told that more blood was able to go to my heart during CPR, because these veins were just a little bit bigger from a lot of working out. But, also recovery-wise, I recovered much faster than I think a normal person who wan’t exercising as much would.”

Bob Odenkirk Believes Fans Will Be Happy With Better Call Saul’s Final Season

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Bob Odenkirk can’t say much about the final season of Better Call Saul, so as not to give out spoilers. He does feel that the show has an “amazing” ending as told to Stern, connecting with Breaking Bad more than ever before. How it all plays out remains to be seen.

“I mean, people ask me if I like Saul Goodman," Odenkirk recently explained. “The answer is no. I like Jimmy McGill. Saul Goodman is the kind of person I would avoid, pretty much at all costs, for a million reasons. Not the least is fashion sense. Keeping those two people in the same body, and having them matter and connect up, can be a challenge for the writers and for me, but it’s been a great, great effort to try to make it work. I can’t wait for people to see this final season. There’s so many different places it goes, and there’s so much happening. It’s amazing.”

The sixth and final season of Better Call Saul will premiere on April 18, 2022.