Bob Odenkirk admitted to rejecting sound medical advice from his doctor because he was politically conservative, then suffered a massive heart attack as a result.
The “Better Call Saul” star spoke about collapsing on the set of the hit “Breaking Bad” spin-off in 2021, on comedian Tig Notaro’s podcast Don’t Ask Tig.
“My doctor was a conservative. He got crankier and crankier the older he got,” Odenkirk complained.
“When I was 50, I went in, he was a heart doctor, Cedar-Sinai, and he had signs up all around his office at this point [saying] ‘We do not accept Obamacare,’ and I hated this side of him that I only learned over time.”
Great to walk the mine at cbs/Radford with friendly scribes! More to come pic.twitter.com/E77E1oXmUL
— Mr. Bob Odenkirk (@mrbobodenkirk) September 18, 2023
Odenkirk said he had been a patient of the cardiologists for 20 years, but ignored his urgent insistence that the actor needed to start a course of cholesterol-lowering drugs.
“He said, ‘You need to start taking statins right now.’ And I said, ‘Well, I don’t know. I don’t have heart disease in my family.’ He goes, ‘Just take ’em,'” the “Nobody” star detailed.
Instead, Odenkirk got a second opinion because he didn’t trust his longtime doctor over his political affiliation.
The other doctor assured the actor that he did not need to to go on the medication his cardiologist insisted upon.
“And I had a heart attack. And I think the first doctor was right,” Odenkirk remarked.
“The cranky conservative jackass was right, because he was a godd–n good doctor.”
Better Call Saul is objectively the best tv show ever made pic.twitter.com/BZLFIeFoxC
— Phoebe (@smphoebev) September 11, 2023
The AMC star learned a near-fatal life lesson as a result. “His political point of view doesn’t have anything to do with his ability to judge your health and your health choices and needs,” he said about the doctor.
Odenkirk collapsed on the set of “Better Call Saul” while filming the episode 8, “Point and Shoot” of the series’ final season in July 2021.
He had a nearly life-ending heart attack and his heart stopped beating for eighteen minutes, while someone on set performed CPR and used an automatic external defibrillator to keep him alive until paramedics arrived.
Bob Odenkirk in pink dress & David Cross in classic tuxedo at 1999 Academy Awards… pic.twitter.com/0b0AoCvW1q
— Neo Jane (@NeoJane8) September 13, 2023
“We were very lucky that this woman was nearby because she knew how to do CPR properly, and she had the AED [defibrillator] in her car, and she only had it in her car because she was returning it to somebody who she borrowed [it from],” Odenkirk told NPR in 2022.
He said it was a “total crazy coincidence” that the show’s health and safety supervisor, Rosa Estrada, had the device in her car only because she had tried to bring it back and her friend was not home at the time.
“Otherwise she wouldn’t have had it either. And so it’s only because of that circumstance that it was in the trunk of her car,” he added.
“And I’m sure that helped me immensely. I mean, the CPR is number one, but the fact is, I didn’t get a heart rate for 18 minutes after this started, and that’s a long time,” Odenkirk noted.
He urged others to take a CPR class so they could learn the technique that saved his life.
“The fact that it was done almost immediately — within a minute and minute and a half — and it was done so well, it was done properly — that’s what really saved me,” he told the outlet.
Odenkirk said that he was oddly revitalized by the incident, which made it easier for him to “be in the moment” when he returned to set a short five weeks later.
“I came out of it with a strangely fresh energy towards my whole life, like I was born again,” he asserted.
“Like, “Hey, everybody! … Let’s go back to work and make stuff!”