How Bob Odenkirk became a badass for anyone

Before Bob Odenkirk thought about undergoing an extreme physical transformation, transforming himself from TV’s most morally loose / physically weak criminal lawyer into a convincing donkey kicker, Better to call Saul star experienced three very real and life-threatening encounters. Odenkirk says he was inspired to invent a relentless and homicidal inversion of the type of guy he is known for playing Nobody (on Friday) – a normcore suburban father whose failure to protect his family during a home invasion theft opens up a hidden and seemingly limitless capacity for chaos and ultraviolence – after his own home has been stolen twice, and following “an incident in Chicago”, during which (the actor will only enigmatically disclose), “I had a gun pointed at my head at 2 am and I gave all my money to that person”.

“I think most people who watch this film will not realize the level of autobiography it contains,” Odenkirk, father of two, 58, told Vulture via Zoom in New Mexico, where the sixth and final is closing. season of Saul. “I had two home invasions in Los Angeles. One was particularly traumatic. Just a typical father scenario. What do you do? I picked up the baseball bat; in the movie, I pick up a golf club. I think I did the right thing, as I told myself, and I’ve told the police a thousand times since then. But not to feel as if I did the right thing. Nobody it is very much related to my real experience of having someone at home, threatening my family, trying to keep the damage to a minimum. “

At the Nobody, that apparent inability of the man to rise in the face of danger loses the character of the respect of his wife and teenage son, but helps him to reallocate a kind of murderous righteousness that was lost in his domestic daily life. Refusing to play Odenkirk’s Everyman-Crazed Ironically, the film’s most visceral shocks come from watching the actor, quite convincingly, chewing and spitting attackers in a volley of fists and bullets – often being chewed and spit out more than that a little bit yourself in the process.

From start to finish, Odenkirk’s process of learning to realistically inhabit the physicality of a Uzis sniper, face destroyer and grenade launcher – a versatile disgusting fighter whose hidden subtlety for murder and disembowelment is gradually revealed as he takes over the Russian Mafia – it took almost two years. A veteran sketch comedian and Emmy-winning TV writer who has invaded public consciousness with a showcase of absurd comedies Mister show and wrote to Saturday Night Live and The Ben Stiller Show, he is best known for playing the despicable lawyer Saul Goodeman in Breaking Bad from 2009 to 2014. Odenkirk came up with the premise of the film about a “father feeling dejected by life, who is incited by a home invasion to reconnect with his skills and release his furious instincts”, and wrote a script with Derek Kolstad , the writer behind the blockbuster John Wick franchise. In more Wick-ian synergy, Odenkirk and their production partners presented the project to 87North: the production company operated by David Leitch, co-director of the first John Wick parcel, as well as striking stunt rides like Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2, and Hobbs and Shaw.

So, for about a year and a half, as Nobody sought financial support and distribution, Odenkirk regularly trained at 87Eleven, the Los Angeles-based action lab that Leitch co-founded, where actors like Charlize Theron and Brad Pitt are not taught to do stunt choreography, but broken down and rebuilt as functional martial artists. “With Bob, it was like, ‘We have the opportunity to take someone who doesn’t have a film history to play action characters – or any experience in action movies – and transform him,'” says Leitch, a film producer. “We were trying to prepare the film and Bob wanted the film to happen in a number of different ways. A lot of it was like, ‘I’m going to continue training and be ready for when the opportunity arises, I can do the choreography. I can be that guy. I can be that character. ‘”

Nobodydirector Ilya Naishuller (the Russian designer of cinematic violence responsible for the 2015 science fiction festival Henry Hardcore) met Odenkirk for the first time at 87Eleven in 2018. His first impression of the actor could be described as “one of these things is not like the others”. “In one corner was Keanu Reeves training to John Wick 3, and he was playing 12 guys. In the smallest corner of the room was Bob face to face, ”says Naishuller. “Bob was sweating. It was difficult for him. He would fall, he would get up, he would get rid of it. He would go again. He would fall back and do that over and over. “

Odenkirk confirms his training with 87Eleven stunt doyen Daniel Bernhardt was hardly a symphony of bodily harmony: “The hardest part was not the physical effort. It was the embarrassment. Here I am training in a corner. Next to me – we can all see each other – is Keanu, who is very good at these things. Halle Berry is there for a few days. Jason Statham answered. There are real fighters; the guy who taught me knife fighting trains Navy SEALs; many of them are the best stuntmen in the world. And here I am in the corner, doing the basics, sweating and looking terrible. So, the hardest part was just that feeling, like, ‘What am I doing? I will never get there. ‘”

The actor underwent firearm training at the Taran Tactical, the same facility where Reeves honed his shooting skills and quick reload for the Wick films. And for a solid two months before the cameras were turned on Nobody, Odenkirk spent every moment outside the Better to call Saul set in a mixed martial arts gym in Albuquerque, perfecting your fighting style. “Never in a million years did I think this comedy actor had this fire inside him,” he says Nobodythe second unit director, Greg Rementer. “He already had the basic knowledge that comes with 10,000 hours bending his knees, twisting his hips, punching him. Next, we spent a lot of time developing the style we wanted Bob to fight for. I said, ‘I want to see you do that kind of judo throw.’ ‘I want to hit him in the face.’ “I want him to punch them.” With Bob, we believed he could step on and break a knee. He could hammer his fist and I felt more in his vocabulary. “

According to Leitch, even after such a prolonged training regime, no one on the production team was prepared for how big Odenkirk had become. “We were getting ready to shoot, doing some makeup and costume tests, and Bob took off his shirt,” recalls the producer. “And everyone was like, ‘Damn it, Bob. You’re torn! It is like Cape Fear up here, man! ‘”(He adds:“ We didn’t do the traditional shirtless scene that you do in all action movies for Bob. ”)

All of that preparation was finally put to the test in Winnipeg, Canada, in 2019, during the filming of NobodyThe introductory action set of: a crash on a public bus, where Odenkirk’s character, Hutch, impulsively decides to take on a quartet of mafia henchmen (two of them played by Bernhardt and stunt coordinator from the movie Kirk Jenkins) in a frenzy of blows. down, drag, hand to hand combat. “Bob gets up. I’m not kidding: it looks like he wants to rip their heads off, ”says Rementer. “And I looked at Kirk and Daniel and said, ‘Guys, good luck. He’s going to kick the shit out of you. He will not contain himself. ‘”

Odenkirk, for his part, felt the weight of a certain performance anxiety. “A lot has happened on the bus scene,” he says. “When we talked about making an action movie, I knew I didn’t want to make an ironic one. I don’t want to be cute about it. I don’t want to soften up for myself. Like, ‘Oh, is he really trying to sell himself as an action star? In truth.’ I’m not blinking or being cute about it. So, yes, I was nervous about it. It all depended on us getting it right – me. “

Over the course of three nights filming the bus scene, however, the filmmakers say that Odenkirk found his pace absent from using any stuntman, his character getting punched in the back of the head, stabbed and thrown through a glass window. on the way to clean the floor with each of his attackers. “We make sure that he is human. That he gets hurt. That he misses. And get hit in the face. This not only allows the audience to connect at a different level. This underlies the story, ”says Naishuller.

“Bob really brought that up,” adds Rementer. “That is why it is such a visceral scene. He’s screaming, drooling, tearing, punching. Loading. Is there. He was totally committed. As if he was entering his first fight in the cage. “