Bob Odenkirk recently opened up about his frightening heart incident and admitted that he “wouldn’t have survived” if he didn’t get help in time. The beloved actor has been making the TV and radio rounds lately, promoting his memoir, Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama. During an interview on the TODAY show, Odenkirk spoke with journalist Hoda Kotb and shared some candid details about the terrifying experience.
“I was turning blue and not breathing, and my heart was arrhythmic, and it needed to get back to a rhythm. I don’t really understand how it works, but I just know I wouldn’t have survived,” he revealed. “We were shooting a great scene…We had gone off to our waiting area, and luckily I stayed in the area with the other actors. If I had gone to my trailer, I wouldn’t be here right now. So I went down, and they set up the alarm, and people came out. Rosa Estrada, our health officer, was a medic who served in the armed forces for a tour and she came out and started CPR on me and saved my life.”
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Odenkirk later confessed that the near-death experience had left him with a brand new outlook on life. “I’m having a very slow epiphany, even right now,” he said. “And the epiphany was simply that my life is pretty damn great, and I should appreciate it and the people around me.”
The actor also appeared on The Howard Stern Show and shared some more details about the heart incident he experienced. “I would have been dead if someone hadn’t immediately screamed and gotten someone there to give me CPR,” Odenkirk told Stern. “CPR saved my life.”
“It took three attempts to get me to [an effective heart] rhythm, which is actually a lot, Howard,” the Better Call Saul star added. “When the defibrillator doesn’t work once, that’s not good. When it doesn’t work the second time, it’s kind of like, ‘Forget it.’ But then they jacked me up to a third time and got me a rhythm.” Odenkirk also explained that rigorous training he engaged in, to get in shape for the action film , helped him during the heart incident. “I was told that more blood was able to go to my heart during CPR because [my veins] were just a little bit bigger from a lot of working out,” he said.
“Some lucky things happened,” Odenkirk continued, praising Estrada again and then revealing how his co-stars also aided him. “But most of all, I was near my co-stars Rhea Seehorn and Patrick Fabian, who rushed right to my side. Rhea held my head and Patrick held my hand … I turned grey right away and stopped breathing, and they were just yelling and yelling … and then everybody [else] kicked into gear.” Fans can see Odenkirk back in action when on April 18.
