Bob Odenkirk Is Still Training at the Gym to Kickstart Jackie Chan-Style Action Career
Bob Odenkirk better call his trainer because the “Better Call Saul” star is dead-set on becoming the action movie hero.
The Emmy winner revealed during the 2022 Venice Film Festival while promoting Cecilia Miniucchi’s “Worlds Apart” that his turn as attorney Saul in the “Breaking Bad” prequel series inspired his hitman role in “Nobody.”
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“I was very surprised by ‘Nobody.’ I had initiated that project because I had a feeling that the character I was developing in ‘Better Call Saul’ was the kind of character you see in an action film,” Odenkirk explained, via Deadline. “He has earnest desires and he was willing to sacrifice himself.”
Odenkirk added, “I still train multiple times a week, and if I get my way, you’re going to see me doing more action. I found the action sequences a great deal of fun and close to doing sketch comedy. I love the early Jackie Chan films, which had humor in them. I’d like to get that in the future.”
And in the vein of humorous action sequences, Odenkirk quipped, “It’s almost like people like to see older people lose their shit. Why does that seem to make sense to everyone? It’s funny.”
Odenkirk previously told The New York Times that “Nobody” was inspired by two real-life break-ins that he experienced.
“My hope is we get to do a trilogy, and he ends up with nothing,” Odenkirk said of his dreams of a franchise for the character. “He destroys everything he loves.”
“Nobody” premiered in 2021 and was produced by David Leitch, the “Bullet Train” helmer and “John Wick” co-director. Leitch confirmed earlier this year that Derek Kolstad is working on a script for a “Nobody” sequel, to be directed by Ilya Naishuller again.
“Oh, I think everyone’s really excited about it,” Leitch told Collider. “Everyone involved is like, ‘Full steam ahead.’ We are in the script process, and I think we had so much fun making that. [Co-producer] Kelly [McCormick] and I had a blast, the actors had a blast, the studio loved the results, and it’s happening. I mean, I think it’s happening as fast as we can make it happen.”
To transform into “nobody” Hutch Mansell, who is determined to exact revenge after a violent crime occurs in his suburban neighborhood, director Naishuller previously revealed to IndieWire that Odenkirk trained for two years to play the role.
“Bob could have said, ‘Ilya, you get a stuntman, you get shaky cam, you do all the regular stuff. And it works,'” Naishuller said. “People generally don’t mind [that]. I hate it. So I was very lucky that, because of Bob’s training, I could shoot it like a proper film, not just a very movie-ish, stuntman shake, cut, every half a second. Every cut we make in the film, it’s not because we had to, it’s because we wanted to. And that’s a wonderful, wonderful place to be at for a director.”
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