Bob Odenkirk Answers the Web's Most Searched Questions | WIRED

this is Bob Odenkirk and this is the full automatic interview on cable opens Kirk, a real lawyer, you know what television is, when did Bob Odenkirk start acting on the third season of Better Call Saul? Most of my career I was a comedy writer and then I was a sketch actor in a lot of sketches because that's what I wrote, but it was a fundamentally different thing to take on the role of Saul Goodman Jimmy McGill in Better Call Saul, even different than Breaking Bad. . I think there was a level of acting. to lose yourself in a role of getting to know a character on Better Call Saul than anything else I've done.

I think I understood it better as the third season went on, it was one that I remember coming in saying, you know, let's get to work. I know what I know what I have to do Where is Bob Odenkirk's star? He is on Vine north of Hollywood Boulevard, about a block and a half away. It's where we filmed a scene from Mr Show. You can search for it on YouTube. It's pumpkin and then you'll see. I'm right where my star is, but I didn't know I'd have a star there one day. When Bob Odenkirk appears on Breaking Bad in the last four episodes of the second season and I was only in three of them because I had to?

How I Met Your Mother and because I had to do How I Met Your Mother, they had to invent another character to carry that plot forward and they invented Mike Ehrman Trout, so thank God I was on How I Met Your Mother because they could invent Mike and then John Banks and I could do better. Calling Saul Bob Odenkirk Larry David when I was on Saturday Night Live as a writer for three and a half years. I used to do improv here in New York and Larry David would go too and he would just get mad at the audience and he would laugh but he would get mad at them and you would say Larry, they liked you, he killed me, he kills me, He's the funniest guy.

I love the sidewalk and I love being on the sidewalk. Very funny Bob Owen Kirk They go by the river I grew up in Chicago and I went to see Second City when I was 14 and it really inspired me to want to be in show business and believe that you know grown people who work in show business. my friend Tom Giannis was running the show on the main stage, it's like a city. He invited me to join and be a part of that show, so I said yes. I helped write the show while I was writing that show.

Chris Farley and I were in the cast. I went home that night and wrote the motivational speaker for Chris Farley exactly as you see it when he does it on SNL, except for the table breaking that was added by Robert Smigel. That's the story of how Bob Odenkirk was cast in Breaking Bad. a very good question and when I hesitated to ask because I didn't want to get kicked out of Breaking Bad, I didn't want them to reconsider the casting of him and Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould, who wrote the character of Saul Goodman in the first one. script I was in in Breaking Bad we are both Mr Show fans and we both thought I was the right guy to play the role.

I don't know why Vince Gilligan is the smartest guy in the room, but he pretends not to be. This act he does, you could call it the "aw shucks" guy, he secretly knows he's working very, very hard and he's also smart, so he listens to people very, very politely, he's never rude and then he does what he's going to do. do and it's the right thing every damn time how Bob Odkin met David Cross is a famous story Jeannie Garofalo was the kind of queen of the alternative comedy scene back in '92 93. I was sitting at home in the afternoon having lunch to which Janine came. my door, the screen door was closed and she was standing outside with her friend David Cross and he has a basketball, she knocks on the door and I'm sitting there and I'm looking over here and she says Hi Bob, okay, Hi Janine, uh this.

It's my friend David Cross from Boston Hi guys, he likes to play basketball. I know you guys want to play too and I'm like, no, I'm eating and then they left. It was one of the

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embarrassing things in David's life. I'm Bob Odenkirk, thanks for asking. I had a cardiac incident that could also be called a heart attack. Feel free, my Widowmaker artery was totally blocked, so he knows that's not good, take my medicine. I have two stents here working, I hope I can do it. another action movie because I loved making the first one.

I'm doing great, thanks okie dokie, where is Bob Odenkirk from? I grew up in Naperville, Illinois, a really nice town and nice people and all that. I was very bored with the city when I was there. 15 but I enjoyed being a kid there and I don't mind going back. I like to go visit my sisters who still live there. Ken Bob Odenkirk still wins an Emmy, yes, but I think every five nominations equals one win. Can Bob Odenkirk? sing no, no, no, I can't, but I will. I am a terrible singer and I love it when people hear me sing.

Don't Robert and Kirk play guitar well? I can touch it, although I can hack it. Bob Odenkirk, lucky Hank, lucky Hank. is a unique show in the sense that it's a kind of 50 50 comedy/drama which isn't easy to do because if you get too silly you stop believing in what's at stake in the dramatic part, so you have to stay tuned with the people you need to believe in. hunger, desires and problems and yet there are also some purely funny scenes, there are no zombies, there are no weapons, there are no drugs, there is no drug cartel, there is no mafia, there are people in the academy, they are teachers and students at a small university that is having financial problems and are trying to get ahead, I mean, it's like life.

What did Bob Odenkirk write on SNL? Not much. I wasn't a very effective writer on Saturday Night Live. I fought a lot. I really wanted to help the program. but I hadn't focused enough on SNL when I got there to ask what this show does, what it needs to do, what it wants to do. I just wanted to write something that made me laugh. I was very lucky. helping Robert Smigel, who was maybe the best writer they ever had on Saturday Night Live, but I just helped. I just wrote a couple of jokes in there, maybe I put a twist on it.

I actually got better towards the end. I was able to help Chris Rock. and Farley and Sandler to set up some scenes and of course I wrote the motivational speaker for Chris Farley, so that's the best thing I did for SNL, but I wrote it in Chicago for Second City, not for Sno, what did Bob Odenkirk direct? ? a couple of feature films and a lot of TV episodes you've never seen. I mean, the movies didn't turn out great, but somehow they were successful for me. Let's go to prison. I really wanted it to feel like a '70s noir exploitation film and we had a lot of fun with the camera like they did in those movies and we wanted it to have a gritty feel because the subject material is a little bit harsh, but it just didn't convince the audience. people about Brother Solomon, I admit it.

I didn't know what I was doing, I knew how to direct but I just didn't know how to make this movie work. Will Forte wrote that script and it's full of heart and it's really sweet and funny and of course everyone showed up to work. and then I let him down. I wish I could reshoot that and if I could, I would reshoot it as a stand-alone movie without built sets and those characters interacting with real people as much as possible. It would be a better idea than what I did in which episode of The Office is Bob Odenkarkan was like season six or seven or something, the joke was that they said that Jenna's character, uh, is going to interview for a job at another First of all, it turns out that his boss would just be a duplicate of Michael Scott, so he was kind of joking.

Steve Carell's great performance when I did that, what episode of Seinfeld does Bob Odenker go back to being the abstinence one where no one has sex and that makes them smarter because they don't have sex and I play a Doctor Who is going to take the mcats and do it well? because he because Elaine doesn't want to have sex with him what did Bob Odenkirk do in The Incredibles? I played the network executive who wants to give them a show and sculpt them a certain way. I seem to be the bad guy, spoiler alert, I'm not.

The character is a genuine character who loves the Incredibles family. Bob Odenkirk auditioned for Michael Scott. I did it. I couldn't wait to audition. I did my best. I think I did a great job. Supposedly it was between Corral and me and him. He understood it and did it very well and he is the best, the best in Michael Scott. Bob Wooden Kirk wrote best call, so I didn't write any of that. Every once in a while we would have a scene that was purely funny and then I would feel freer to suggest to Peter Gould, you know how about I say this or that, but that show wasn't one where you joked around or improvised?

Did Bob and Kirk write for The Simpsons? I didn't my brother Bill for many Many years also has a PhD in chemistry from the University of Chicago. Did Bob Odenkirk play football? I played soccer on my high school team. He really was a little guy and they put me in a safe place. I did well, but everyone was much bigger than me. Bob Odenkirk Robin Williams Robin Williams was extremely kind to me and David Cross when we did comic relief 8. Our show Mr Show with Bob and David wasn't a huge hit, it was the definition of a cult hit that we were invited to do the comic relief 8. and uh, no one knew who we were, the other two hosts rolled their eyes at us and Robin came up to us and told us that you guys are great and that he had seen Mr.

Show, he loved comedy, it meant a lot for me, you know? and then I had to be in a movie with them. I think it was his last film. Boulevard. I really enjoyed acting with him. It was difficult. How Bob Odenkirk ended. Little women. An incredible gift. I have two children and the book is one of the best books of all time that cast is an incredibly talented and wonderful cast credit Gerwig is an incredible director we had a lot of fun I had a lot of fun being around the energy of that young cast and I love it and I will always be grateful.

I got to play Father March Bob Odenkirk Larry Sanders I got to play Stevie Grant on the Larry Sanders Show. It was really my first gig as an actor. I know we talked about my first performance and it's probably like that. Larry Sanders is a great show if you've done it. I had never seen it, it is a comedy, but it was performed with a lot of basis. It was wonderful to be a part of all the good actors and great to be on that set. Book review by Bob Odenkirk. Thanks for asking. I should do a book review show because I read a lot. and lately my favorite books, one called Guilty of Everything, by John Auber Armstrong, he was in a rock band The Modernettes and he is a great writer and I am reading another of his books right now called Salaries and it is very funny.

I also published a memoir last year. comedy comedy comedy drama that tells you many of the stories that I just told you or in greater depth I also have a book that is about to be published, a book that I wrote with my children when they were little and it is a book of poems and it is called zylit z-i-l-o-t zeal, well there you go, that's all there is to know about me, thanks for asking.