When eager Netflix viewers tune into tomorrow’s episode of Better Call Saul, they’ll be watching a scene that was almost never finished.
Lead star Bob Odenkirk has told The Hollywood Reporter that his heart attack, which happened on July 28, 2021, happened during the filming of a key moment in Tuesday’s episode.
“I feel very good. I’m in great shape,” Odenkirk told the publication about his health since then.
“I didn’t go back to shoot for five weeks. I had a five-week break to recover. And then when I went back, we limited our shooting to 12-hour days. And so they took care of me and I was able to do it, and hopefully you can’t tell when I had the heart attack and when I didn’t.”
During filming, Odenkirk, who was 58 at the time, collapsed during filming in Albuquerque, where the series was being shot.
However, he took to Twitter two days after to tell people that despite having a “small heart attack”, he would “be back soon”.
The editor’s magic will be visible (or not) when next week’s episode comes out.
“Probably about three-quarters of the scene was shot before I had the heart attack, the day of the heart attack, and then the other quarter scene was after,” Odenkirk explained.
“The strangest thing about it is that I really have no memory of that day.”
“I’m really watching something that I don’t have any memory of acting in, which is a rare thing. I mean, usually you watch some, and you have some recall of that even if it was shot months ago. But in this case, it’s such a complete blank.
“It’s very strange. I gotta tell you, it’s a weird thing to have lost basically about a week and a half.”
After Odenkirk’s heart attack, Better Call Saul stopped filming, but started again in September 2021.
Now, the show is currently in the middle of airing its sixth and final season, for which it is receiving rave reviews (read ours here).
It follows the story of lawyer Jimmy McGill, whose gradual moral slide turns him into the infamous lawyer to the criminal and the desperate, Saul Goodman (who first appeared in Breaking Bad).
Viewers have also been promised the return of Walter White (Bryan Cranston) and sidekick Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), though series executives have been tight-lipped about how it will happen.
