Bob Odenkirk on His 2021 Heart Attack: ‘I Was Gone. I Turned Grey’

Bob Odenkirk has never shied away from talking about the day his heart nearly gave out on him — but in a new interview with The Times of London, the Better Call Saul star is sharing details that make the whole thing feel even more terrifyingly close.

“I went down and Rhea [Seehorn] and Patrick [Fabian] grabbed me and they were screaming, but [the crew members who noticed] thought they were laughing,” Odenkirk recalled. “So there were delays in reacting because we were all so far apart from each other. I was gone. I turned grey. Eventually the on-set medic showed up and he didn’t know what to do. He’d never done CPR.”

That was July 2021. Odenkirk was 58 years old, deep into filming the sixth and final season of the hit AMC drama, when he collapsed. He was rushed to a local hospital and treated — remarkably, without surgery — for what turned out to be a blockage in his widow-maker artery. That’s not a nickname anyone wants to earn. “That’s why it’s called the widow-maker ’cause you die when that happens,” he said plainly during a 2022 appearance on Sunday Today. “But I went down.”

A Week of His Life He Simply Doesn’t Have

One of the most striking things about Odenkirk’s account isn’t what happened — it’s what he can’t tell you about it, because he wasn’t there for any of it, even as it was happening to him.

“A lot of people get that wonderful reel of film of their life, or they have a person who says, ‘Do you want to go back?’” he told The Times. “None of that for me. The first memory I have is leaving the hospital a week after I got there.”

Everything he knows about that day came from the people who lived through it alongside him — his castmates, his crew, the people who love him and stood at his side while he was somewhere else entirely. “I was not present for any of it,” he said in that same 2022 interview. “I’m told it was a pretty shocking day on set, and traumatizing for all my costars and crew members.”

The memory loss didn’t stop when he left the hospital, either. Speaking to Yahoo! Life in 2023, Odenkirk described a strange kind of cognitive fog that lingered for weeks. “Weirdly, it didn’t affect me much for a long time. I had a strange kind of upbeat energy literally the next day, and every day,” he said. “It was because I had, like, a mind wipe every night. My ability to even think about what had happened to me was compromised — I needed to hear about it from people who’d been there, and I needed my brain to get back on a normal state. It’s something I think about every day.”

What Came After

Days after the incident, Odenkirk broke his silence on social media with a message that was equal parts gratitude and relief. “Hi. It’s Bob,” he wrote on X, then still called Twitter. “Thank you. To my family and friends who have surrounded me this week. And for the outpouring of love from everyone who expressed concern and care for me. It’s overwhelming. But I feel the love and it means so much.”

A follow-up post named the person he credits with saving his life: “I’m going to be ok thanks to Rosa Estrada and the doctors who knew how to fix the blockage without surgery.” He also couldn’t resist a little warmth. “I’ve had my very own ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ week of people insisting I make the world slightly better. Wow! Thank you, I love everyone right now but let’s keep expectations reasonable!”

Since then, Odenkirk has made real changes. He’s cut back on sugar and now takes statins, aspirin, and metoprolol — a beta-blocker that helps manage blood pressure. The kind of quiet, unglamorous daily maintenance that means he’s still here.

And he’s genuinely grateful for it. “That was such a gift, to experience a few weeks where I felt that way about my presence in the world,” he told The Times. “I felt just very, very delighted and engaged.”

Coming from the man who spent years playing one of TV’s most anxious, scheming, survival-at-all-costs characters, that kind of peace sounds hard-won. And entirely earned.