Actor Bob Odenkirk talks about a near-death experience

VPM | By Rachel Martin

Published April 16, 2026 at 9:08 PM EDT

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

Each week, a guest draws a card from NPR’s Wild Card deck and answers a big question about their life. Bob Odenkirk has range. The “Better Call Saul” star has acted in comedies, dramas, even on Broadway. And now he is a bona fide action star. His latest contribution to the genre is called “Normal.” He says action films like this one serve a kind of moral purpose.

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BOB ODENKIRK: We live in a world that we know has – is all gray area, and we know as we go through life we can get rageful and angry, but probably that person that we’re rageful and angry at does not deserve our rage or our anger. They probably are a human like us. And so there’s no place for us to put our anger that deserves our anger. But in a movie, you can invent a pure evil creation, and then it’s worthy of this violence that you get to act out in a movie.

CHANG: Odenkirk spoke with Wild Card host Rachel Martin.

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RACHEL MARTIN: How big a role does fear play in your life?

ODENKIRK: Well, it should play a bigger role. I say, yes, I’ll do something that I should be afraid of, and then I get to work on it and then fear kind of creeps in. You know, Broadway, doing “Glengarry Glen Ross”…

MARTIN: Yeah.

ODENKIRK: …On Broadway is a play I knew I wanted to do.

MARTIN: Scary, though, I imagine.

ODENKIRK: But the scary part didn’t hit me until I’m doing it and I’m on Broadway. And it’s – you know, and it sort of lingered for weeks and weeks. And in the end, I did it. I got nominated for a Tony. I feel confident now after, you know, four months doing that on stage, and I’m excited to do more Broadway at some point, or just more theater. And…

MARTIN: May I ask you about your heart attack? Because it seems like that would be…

ODENKIRK: Sure.

MARTIN: …Very scary and it would have – you had a heart attack when you were on the set of “Better Call Saul.” And it seemed like you could either be very fearful or you could just say, I only have so many days in this world, and so I’m just going to live every second and take all the risks.

ODENKIRK: I didn’t have the experience that a lot of people have where they see their life flash before their eyes or they have some kind of slideshow of their regrets or something. There was very little trauma for me. What there was, was there was this lingering joy that I felt upon sort of resuming consciousness a week later that stuck with me for a couple of weeks, but that I also could feel was going away and would go away, but that I remember thinking, I have to remember this. I have to try to live this way. I have to try to see the world this way. But it – this feeling of the world being pretty magical and beautiful and astounding – a marvel to look at. And I remember thinking, this is the best, and this is how you should feel. This is what life is. This is life.

CHANG: You can watch the full conversation with Bob Odenkirk on YouTube – @NPRWildCard. His new movie, “Normal,” is in theaters Friday. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Rachel Martin

Rachel Martin is a founding host of NPR's award-winning morning news podcast Up First. Martin's interviews take listeners behind the headlines to understand the people at the center of those stories.

She spent six years as a host of Morning Edition, and was previously the host of Weekend Edition Sunday for four years, where she launched the "For the Record" series.

Martin also served as National Security Correspondent for NPR, where she covered both defense and intelligence issues. She traveled regularly to Iraq and Afghanistan with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and his successor Leon Panetta, reporting on the U.S. wars and the effectiveness of the Pentagon's counterinsurgency strategy. Martin also reported extensively on the changing demographic of the U.S. military – from the debate over whether to allow women to fight in combat units, to the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell. Her reporting on how the military is changing also took her to a U.S. Air Force base in New Mexico for a rare look at how the military trains drone pilots.

Martin also worked as a NPR foreign correspondent based in Berlin from 2005-2006. During her time in Europe, she covered the London terrorist attacks, the election of Angela Merkel as Chancellor to Germany, the 2006 World Cup and issues surrounding immigration and shifting cultural identities in Europe.

Her foreign reporting experience extends beyond Europe. Martin has also worked extensively in Afghanistan. She began reporting from there as a freelancer during the summer of 2003, covering the reconstruction effort in the wake of the U.S. invasion. In fall 2004, Martin returned for several months to cover Afghanistan's first democratic presidential election. She has reported widely on human rights issues in Afghanistan, the fledgling political and governance system and the U.S.-NATO fight against the insurgency. She also reported from Iraq, where she covered U.S. military operations and the strategic alliance between Sunni sheiks and the U.S. military in Anbar province. She traveled to Saudi Arabi in 2015 to report on women's rights and in 2022 she reported from Ukraine's border with Belarus in the leadup to the Russian war.

Martin was part of the team that launched NPR's experimental morning news show, The Bryant Park Project, based in New York — a live two-hour daily multimedia program that she co-hosted with Alison Stewart and Mike Pesca.

In 2006-2007, Martin served as NPR's religion correspondent. Her piece on Islam in America was awarded "Best Radio Feature" by the Religion News Writers Association in 2007. As one of NPR's reporters assigned to cover the Virginia Tech massacre that same year, she was on the school's campus within hours of the shooting and on the ground in Blacksburg, Va., covering the investigation and emotional aftermath in the following days. In 2011, her story on racial discrimination in Hollywood won a Salute to Excellence Award from the National Association of Black Journalists and her series on the effects of the opioid epidemic on children won a Gracie award in 2019.

Martin started her career at public radio station KQED in San Francisco as a producer and reporter.

She holds an undergraduate degree in political science and an honorary doctorate from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash. Martin also holds a Master's degree in international affairs from Columbia University.

She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and two sons.

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