Bob Odenkirk Focusing on Work-Life Balance After Heart Attack: 'We Don't Get to Carry On Forever'
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Bob Odenkirk is still working on processing his near-fatal heart attack in 2021.
During AMC+'s Television Critics Association presentation on Monday, the Better Call Saul star opened up about the health scare and how it gave him a "blank slate" when returning to work five weeks later.
"Whatever growth may come from my heart attack, I'm still in the middle of it," the actor and comedian explained. "I had to finish this season of Saul, and do all these things that I'd signed up for, and I had a strange kind of blank slate quality to that experience. Literally, I couldn't remember any of it and even had a hard time making memories for weeks afterwards."
"Some people say it was like a mechanism, like a self-protective thing that your body does. But everyone has different experiences with those kinds of things," Odenkirk continued. "For me, I think it's still resonating in my life."
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The Emmy Award winner said that for a long time after the heart attack he was "weirdly upbeat" and felt a sense of euphoria.
"It was a gift, I suppose, but also strange for everyone around me, who was like, 'Are you alright?' 'I'm great! Let's go to work!' 'OK, calm down.' It was like being this weird little baby bird, you know, at the age of 59," he said.
Odenkirk assured that now, his current focus right now is figuring out a healthy work-life balance.
"I have to do a better job because we don't get to carry on forever. We just don't," he added. "I've got to make the right choices so I can feel like I'm doing the best I can with the time I have left for the things I love in this world."
"I don't think I've figured it out yet," the actor admitted, "but I'm working on it."
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Odenkirk suffered a heart attack on July 27, 2021 while in New Mexico filming scenes for the the ninth episode of Better Call Saul's sixth season, "Point and Shoot."
He told The New York Times that an on-set health safety supervisor and an assistant director on the series performed CPR and shocked him with an automated defibrillator three times to restart his heart before he was taken to a hospital. Shortly after, his rep told PEOPLE that Odenkirk was in stable condition.
"I went to play the Cubs game and ride my workout bike, and I just went down. Rhea said I started turning bluish-gray right away," he told the Times. Odenkirk learned that he had plaque buildup in his heart in 2018, but said he received conflicting medical advice on treating it. The 2021 cardiac event occurred when "one of those pieces of plaque broke up."
Since his heart attack, Odenkirk has been vocal about how the health scare changed his life.
"The epiphany was simply that my life is pretty damn great, and I should appreciate it and the people around me," Odenkirk told Hoda Kotb on Today last year. "I think people do have epiphanies when they have a near-death experience, and oftentimes, it's 'I have to change something.' And I think my epiphany is I have to appreciate what I have, because it's really great and I have really great people around me."
