11 min readJUST A FEW years ago, the idea of Bob Odenkirk leading an action film would’ve probably only seemed possible in a short-form comedy sketch. Through starring in a supporting role in Breaking Bad and then taking the lead in its spinoff, Better Call Saul, the lifelong comedy writer and star had achieved something rarely done in the business: transitioned from a comedy legend into a truly tremendous dramatic actor. Did he have another jump in him? The answer proved to be a resounding “Yes,” as he immediately showed he could hang with the action heavyweights in 2021’s bloody and fast-paced Nobody. Then, proving that wasn’t just a gimmick, he did it again in 2025 with its sequel, Nobody 2, taking on even more heightened blunt force trauma thanks to Indonesian superstar director Timo Tjahjanto helming the flick for his Hollywood debut.
Now that the thrill of seeing one half of the legendary Mr. Show duo engaging in Hong Kong-inspired fights has become commonplace, Odenkirk has found yet another new leaf. In his latest film, Normal, directed by Ben Wheatley, Odenkirk trades in his role as a skilled, lifelong assassin for that of a regular, everyday, well, normal, small-town sheriff.
After the sheriff of Normal, Minnesota, dies under mysterious circumstances, Ulysses (Bob Odenkirk) is brought in as the locale’s interim top lawman. Assuming that running this sleepy, tiny town will be a walk in the park, Ulysses soon realizes that all is not what it seems in Normal. Some might say that Normal isn’t all that normal at all. Normal quickly establishes itself as a modern-day Western of sorts, and as it tends to be the case in that genre, when an unsuspecting hero drifts into town, the bullets and fists begin to fly soon after.
What’s most exciting about Odenkirk’s latest stab at action is how sloppy it all is; this is very much the point and not a pejorative. His Ulysses, while knowing how to use a gun well enough, is not a trained fighter. His punches land with a thud, he falls on his ass here and there, and he isn’t afraid to get a little dirty to end a fight. It’s refreshing to see a stunt-heavy fight film where the action, within reason, largely looks like the inhabitants of Anytown, USA could partake in it. In a world of John Wick clones, Normal isn’t set in a world where everyone’s an assassin and fighting comes naturally (ironic, considering the film is written by Wick architect and franchise creator Derek Kolstad). Sometimes Ulysses misses and then has to use his brain to find a way around his combatant.
It’s this aspect that separates Ulysses from Hutch in the Nobody series the most. Hutch has brains—as all assassins probably should. But Ulysses has more brains than brawn. Immediately upon arriving in Normal, he can smell a rat. He knows this town isn’t up to snuff, and decides being the hero, this time, isn’t for him. Maybe it’s best to lie low and let whatever needs to blow over, blow over, and get out of dodge. Of course, his hands will end up getting dirty, and fights will ensue, but Odenkirk’s hero this time is a totally new creation. This variance is something that differentiates him from many of his newfound action contemporaries. Odenkirk’s ability to keep a foot planted in many areas of acting, be it dramatic work, action, or stage acting, has kept him compelling, where many would be happy navigating just one avenue.
Ahead of Normal’s release, Odenkirk sat down with Men’s Health to talk the many similarities between comedy and action, his growing confidence around performing stunts, and how he reflects on his 2021 heart attack, five years later.
MEN’S HEALTH: There’s a long history of overlap between action and comedy. Structuring a joke isn’t dissimilar from structuring a fight: Each has a setup and a punchline. How do you draw on your history in comedy when stepping into action?
BOB ODENKIRK: Your observation is exactly right. When I was doing the bus fight in Nobody, which was the first on-screen fight I did in a feature film, halfway through, I realized, "This is just like when I was doing sketch comedy, in a structural way." A screen fight is often between two and five minutes long, which is what a sketch is. It has little rules to it and a game that's playing out, and your job is to tease the rules of the game and have fun with the tensions of the moment, just as it is in a sketch scene.
Also, you laugh a lot when you do screen fighting. Usually, after the director says, "Cut," everyone laughs. There's just such a thrill. You get such a boost of energy from doing it, but also there's the trick of it. It's all fake, and you can't help but laugh. So, I do think about my fights like each of them has its own character, and each hopefully has a bit of a journey in it, and a turn, where you're playing with the props or the set or the tension. Then you try to turn it inside out at the end.
MH: In Nobody, you’re playing a trained assassin who’s had to bury that away while living a suburban life. In Normal, you’re just a regular guy who’s stumbled into this bad situation. How does your approach change when playing a skilled fighter versus someone who might be a little sloppier?
BO: I'm going to point out something to you, Brandon. There are two fights in Normal where I fall down. In both of those moments, that was actually me falling down. That was not a choreographed, planned fall. In the hardware store and in the kitchen, my character falls. He slips and falls, and we kept that in. I love that, because that's my contribution to this genre. My contribution to this genre is a clumsy regular guy who, hopefully, makes you, as a viewer, think, "Oh, this guy is in real trouble." That raises the stakes and makes it more exciting.
So many action stars play a kind of superhuman character who would never slip or fall. You'd never see Jason Statham fall down in a fight. And, if he did fall down, they wouldn't use it. They would redo the moment. Whereas with me, when I fall down during a fight, I'm like, "That’s great. That’s going to be so good in the movie."
MH: What’s been exciting for you about jumping into the action world at this point in your career?
BO: Initially, it was a bit of a brain fart. It was not a well-thought-out, long-term trajectory. It was something that just came to me, that, as Saul Goodman in Better Call Saul, people knew my character as a hardworking person who never quit on his plans and who got pushed down a lot, but came back. That's kind of an action character, except as Saul, I didn't fight—but I was willing to learn to fight. I knew I had it in me to perform that intense kind of character you see in an action movie.
The fact it worked meant I got to do more. So, now I've gotten to do two others, Nobody 2 and Normal. Now I'm exploring different sides of it. In Nobody 2, I did a fight on a duck boat that's the closest thing I've done to a Jackie Chan fight. It's kind of a clever fight—It's comical and overplayed in the physicality of it. Jackie Chan was a real inspiration to me, in particular his movie Police Story, which I watched with my kids. Now, Jackie, when he does an action scene, especially in those early films, it doesn't have any blood. It's all about being clever and funny. It's more like a comedy sketch than even the ones I've done.
One thing driving me now is to do a variety of action. I would love to do a PG-rated or even G-rated action movie where there's no blood, and it really is for the whole family. I don't know if I'll get to do that, but maybe. Maybe one day. I just like doing different things—I'm going to read a Broadway play this week with the cast, and see how that feels. That's one reason I got into showbiz: to try different things.
MH: Falling down all day can’t feel great, no matter how protected you are. What does decompressing after a stunt-heavy day look like for you?
BO: I'm not good at that—I've never been good at decompressing, ever. I have no established process for it, and it's something I have to work on. Men's Health is your magazine, yes?
MH: Yes.
BO: People should think about that. I don't know if you guys write about that, but I'd read about it if you did (Editor’s note: We do.). People need to make that a part of their physical exercise, or their physical engagement with the world. The stunt guys I work with, they talk about taking a rest day once a week. I don't drink, I don't like marijuana, and I don't get massages enough. I rarely get them.
When you’re doing a heavy workout, or an action scene all day, oftentimes you do it for two or three days in a row. You don't always get it all in one day. What do you do after that? The way I handle it is I go to bed, and I don't sleep well. But that's not really a very good process. So, I have no answer for you except, would you please tell me how to do it? [Laughs].
MH: I’m a terrible sleeper, too, so if I find the solution, I’ll let you know. Ben Wheatley is now the third director you’ve worked with in the action world. As you become more comfortable with the process, are you finding more confidence in suggesting things to your directors?
BO: I’ve gotten more comfortable with screen fighting and planning and participating in the choreography. I was a part of that first bus fight on Nobody. I said, "Look, in this fight, since it's Hutch's first fight back into the business, I want to hit my head, I want to miss with my punch, and I want to get thrown out of the bus and come back in." In Normal, a lot of times, we'll have a fight, we'll talk about it, and Derek Kolstad will write a rough idea of what the fight is. Then Greg Rementer is our second-unit director, and he helps choreograph these fights and shoot them. Greg did all three of these movies: Nobody, Nobody 2, and Normal. Then they’ll show me what they've developed, and I’ll say, "I want to add this in. I want to add that in."
For instance, in the kitchen fight in Normal, there was a gun. At first, nobody got their hands on the gun, and I said, "That can't be true. One of us, me or the guy I'm fighting, has to get a hold of the gun at some point. And then that gun has to go off." Chekhov's rule, right? Then we have to figure that out. So, I helped with the solution. I won’t spoil it, but I helped design the action so all those things could happen. Like I said earlier, it reminds me so much of my days writing sketch comedy.
MH: Derek Kolstad has been the writer across all three of these movies. In Normal, you share a writing credit with him. How did that come about?
BO: Derek Kolstad is a unique talent. First of all, he's always writing. He's written many, many movies and TV shows. He loves to write. He's very open-minded, and he really wants to hear ideas from anybody: the director, the writer, the actors, the second unit director, the choreographer, the stuntmen. He wants to hear any and all ideas, and he means it when he says that. And he listens, and figures out ways to use those ideas.
I have a ‘story by’ credit on Normal because when he showed me the outline, which he already had. I said, "I love this first half hour of this film," which is more like an old Humphrey Bogart suspense movie. My character is in this town, something's wrong, and he's trying to figure out what that is. He's also trying to avoid seeing what it is. There's a part of Ulysses who doesn't even want to know. He just wants it at arm's length.
I like that character development. I like that complexity. I like that tone, which is different from action films generally. I said, "Can I help with that part of the story?" So, I have a ‘story by’ credit, because I worked on the first 35 minutes of Normal with story ideas, textural ideas, character ideas for the small town sequence. Then, at about minute 38, it becomes a full-on action film. It even veers into kind of a horror film at times, which is the province of Ben Wheatley, our director, and Derek Kolstad, the writer, not me. I really only helped with the first 40 or so minutes.
MH: That first chunk is great. I really dig how Ulysses immediately clocks that something is up, and just decides to ignore it. I found it refreshing how little shoe leather there is in his sussing out that the town isn’t what it seems. He sees it, and decides it’s not for him to solve.
BO: One of the things I love about this film is that I get to play a character who is kind of my age, which is to say he's lived a lot of life. He’s hesitant about his own instincts. He knows something is wrong, he's even curious, but he cuts himself off and backs up and tries to stay out of it. You learn different lessons from life, and you don't always learn the right lesson. In his case, he's learned the lesson of "I don't want to know." Then it eventually becomes too late, and he has no choice. He sees what he shouldn't have seen, and he has to take action.
MH: In terms of learning lessons, it’s been about five years since your health scare. You’ve been very open about how learning the fight choreography for Nobody saved your life. How do you reflect on it all now? We’re all so happy you’re still here.
BO: Well, thanks for saying that. I'm happy to be here. It's five years this coming July. I already got my five-year checkup, because while there were some indications that were concerning, as it turns out, I'm in great shape. My five-year checkup includes an EKG. As you said, the training I did for Nobody helped me survive that heart attack, which is also referred to as a heart incident by heart doctors. I have almost no scarring on my heart.
Now, I had no regular heartbeat for 15 minutes. They didn't even have an AED nearby until 15 minutes later. So, I was getting CPR at that time, during that time, and then I got the AED, and then that restored a heartbeat after three shocks. I should have scarring, but I don't. The reason is that some of the veins leading to my heart are enlarged from vigorous exercise I did for Nobody. That meant during the CPR, my heart was receiving blood at a pretty steady rate, whereas usually that would be pretty much shut down, and the heart starts to scar up very fast.
So, that training and physical exercise really helped me survive the heart incident with no lingering damage—which is the best. I'm doing well. I’ve got two stents, and they're doing great. I've reduced all my medications to the minimum. I take a statin, I take metoprolol, and I take aspirin every day. I'll tell you, if you ask me how it affects my life, it's really about experiencing the moment you're in, valuing it, and appreciating the world that's pretty miraculous around us right now.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Brandon Streussnig is a freelance film journalist in New York City with bylines in Vulture, GQ, Inverse, Fangoria and more. He is the creator of the annual Vulture Stunt Awards celebrating the best in cinematic stunt work.
