Why Bob Odenkirk answered the call
A small role in the hit series "Breaking Bad" was a very big break for actor Bob Odenkirk. It put him on the road to his own show ... a road very different than the one he'd been traveling. Lee Cowan has our Sunday Profile:
"I have an ability to put myself out there. It's called poor boundaries!" Bob Odenkirk laughed. "It's called, 'Something is broken inside that man.'"
Professionally, there's certainly nothing "broken" about Bob Odenkirk, although his breakout role did involve a little "Breaking Bad."
As the smarmy underworld lawyer Saul Goodman in the smash AMC series, he could talk his way out of anything -- sporting a mouth as loud as his suits.
"He comes in like a hurricane, and he's got all these words, " said writer Peter Gould. "He's got so much to say, he just comes in with an avalanche of words."
Gould created the Saul character basically as a one-off. Odenkirk was sure it wasn't going to last past a few episodes.
"When you initially took the role for 'Breaking Bad,' you thought you were going to get killed off every other week, right?" asked Cowan.
"Oh, every time I read the script, I thought Saul Goodman was going to die," Odenkirk replied. "He was a perfect character to kill!"
But Odenkirk so impressed both Gould and showrunner Vince Gilligan that they decided "Breaking Bad" couldn't live without him.
"Once we realized just how many layers he could exhibit as a character, we started to realize more and more we should do more with this guy," Gilligan said.
Even before "Breaking Bad" ended, they were thinking of giving Odenkirk his very own spin-off -- "Better Call Saul."
As a rule, spin-offs of shows that big generally have a pretty dismal history. But already, Odenkirk's performance has earned him Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for Best Actor in a Drama.
"I don't know why people decided I can do this, but I'm not going to look at it too closely," Odenkirk said, musing, "There's a real actor somewhere who is not working."
It IS pretty remarkable, given that Odenkirk wasn't known for doing drama at all. For 25 years he'd been making his living as a sketch comedy writer instead.
Cowan asked Gilligan, "Did you wonder what kind of actor he would be?"
"We were, ahhh ... That's a darn good question!" he laughed. "I guess we should have wondered instead of just taking a flying leap."
Comedy is in Odenkirk's blood. He's been a rabid fan of Monty Python since childhood, and he's made a career out of elevating the absurd on stage. In fact, he decided nothing would be MORE absurd than to do part of our interview during his performance at the famous improv comedy club, the Upright Citizens Brigade, in Hollywood.
The actor relishes the unexpected -- and the interview was certainly that; Cowan had never done an interview on stage in front of a live audience before.
"How often do people come up to you on the street and ask you to say, 'Better Call Saul'?" Cowan asked.
"Oh, you know, too much! One time is too much. But also, people get the name wrong, which is so weird to me. 'Gotta Get Saul!' It's like if you saw somebody from '60 Minutes,' and you were like, '38 Minutes'! I'm close!"
Odenkirk started writing comedy sketches when he was in high school. When he was 14 he saw a show at the famed Second City theater in Chicago, and it changed his life.
"Man, that was an inspiration," he said. "Man, the energy in that theater was so great."
He eventually got a job at Second City himself, where he met comedian Chris Farley. Soon both were at "Saturday Night Live" -- Farley on stage, Odenkirk in the SNL writer's room.
He wrote the infamous Motivational Speaker sketch: "That was fun! I mean, the funniest characterization and physicalization ever."
Farley: "From what I've heard you're using your paper not for writing, but for rolling doobies. You're going to be doing a lot of doobie-rolling when you're living in a van down by the river!"
Odenkirk worked with Conan O'Brien and Ben Stiller, and had a host of well-placed comedic cameos, including on "Seinfeld." He's most remembered for creating a sketch comedy series for HBO, "Mr. Show with Bob and David," alongside his friend, David Cross.
He'd achieved what he always wanted as a kid. And yet, for Odenkirk something was still missing. "I did a lot of sketch comedy, I enjoy writing it, and I enjoy being in it. But I've never thought that I belonged there as a performer," he said.
And here's where Hollywood gets weird. He never auditioned for "Breaking Bad." He hadn't even seen the show. But Vince Gilligan had seen him, and saw something behind Odenkirk's jokes.
"If you can do comedy, you can do drama," Gilligan said. "I don't know that the reverse is always necessarily true. We really thought about Bob Odenkirk pretty much from the get-go."
When he got the call, the funnyman thought it was all a joke. "I really put no hope in it all," he laughed. "I just went, 'Okay, let's talk about what that would be.' That'll be a fun lunch at the Chateau Marmont."
He may make fun of himself, but others started taking Odenkirk very seriously. Director Alexander Payne cast him alongside Bruce Dern in his Oscar-nominated film, "Nebraska."
Odenkirk has become -- as one writer put it -- an acting powerhouse, even if the former comedy sketch writer doesn't necessarily believe it himself.
"I still don't entirely trust this performance thing," he said. "Not entirely. But I still think I'm couple years away from talking about myself as an actor and meaning it, and believing it myself. I just think you gotta earn it."
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