The going-nutty professor

Better Call Saul’s Bob Odenkirk plays a university head of deparment in crisis in new black comedy Lucky Hank.

- MICHELE MANELIS

Bob Odenkirk spent nearly 14 years playing fast-talking conman-turned lawyer Saul Goodman in Breaking Bad and its spin-off prequel, Better Call Saul.

It almost killed him. In July 2021, Odenkirk suffered a heart attack while filming.

“I was trending,” he says. “Any time someone trends on Twitter, I get scared if it’s a celebrity. But in this case, it was a near-death experience and people found out. It was a rare moment when the Twitter universe came together with just an outpouring of love.

“I was knocked out by the response. I heard about it over the following two weeks because I had a loss of memory during the incident and even during the week after, and I had to hear about it from everybody. I’m curious as to why, because I play rascals mostly,” he shrugs. “But I’ll take it.”

Now Odenkirk’s gone back to school and returned to his comedic roots in Lucky Hank.

Again, he’s the title character – William “Hank” Devereaux Jr, a seemingly permanently exasperated English professor and head of department at a middling college somewhere in Pennsylvania.

“I play another crabby guy but, like most older crabby guys, he’s a likeable crab.”

Again, he’s the fast-talking centre of a show that’s a mix of satirical comedy and drama. Hank’s long-unfinished second novel and a class full of creative-writing students, selfdeluded about their talents, are all adding to an apparent mid-life crisis.

“Well, it’s not really a crisis,” he says. “It’s just a moment. Death and birth hit you at [times] and it makes you think about life. This show is about that.