The final season of the acclaimed Breaking Bad spinoff and prequel Better Call Saul is done shooting, anticipated to premiere on AMC soon. On Monday, we reported that he described the 13 episode order as a “helluva great season” and “our best” on Twitter.
Fans are grateful to have the new episodes at all after Odenkirk’s on-set health scare. In an interview published today with The New York Times, the actor detailed more about the July 2021 heart attack he suffered while filming the show.
“We were shooting a scene, we’d been shooting all day and luckily I didn’t go to my trailer,” Odenkirk told the outlet. “I went to ride my workout bike and I went down. [Co-star] Rhea [Seehorn] said I started turning bluish-gray right away. I’d known since 2018 I had this. They blew up little balloons and knocked out plaque and left stents in.”
He returned to work in September of that year and ultimately concluded his run with something he says is not over the top but filled with depth and allowed him to accomplish things he has wanted to do with Saul Goodman for a while.
“It’s not flashy. It’s substantial and on some level it’s things I hoped for for years in this character’s brain,” he added. “It’s not cheap. It’s not easy. It doesn’t feel cartoonish. I would wanna end with this kind of character-development focus. That’s what it’s about, instead of something that just has guns. There’s a few. But not like in other episodes.”
Earlier seasons of Better Call Saul and its chronicling of lawyer and criminal Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman/Gene Takovic and his experiences with the Albuquerque and narcotics world are available on Netflix if you need to get caught up.