Better Call Saul Made Bob Odenkirk Realize Just How Hard Acting Can Be

Bob Odenkirk even admits to being a person who would “… scoff and roll my eyes at actors who say, ‘It’s so hard.’ Really? It can’t be.” He’s been acting for decades, though largely in comedies and sketch shows. His role on “Better Call Saul” required him to ruminate on dark memories and tap into exhausting emotions, which, does frankly sound draining:

” … The truth is that you use your emotions, and you use your memories, you use your hurt feelings and losses, and you manipulate them, dig into them, dwell on them. A normal adult doesn’t walk around doing that. Going: ‘What was the worst feeling of abandonment I’ve had in my life? Let me just gaze at that for the next week and a half, because that’s going to fuel me.'”

The narrative about acting isn’t new. While Odenkirk is open and thoughtful about his feelings on the difficult sides of the job, we’ve all heard the tortured artist stories before. It’s the way he explains how his thoughts on acting changed over time, the way he dives into how he gets prepared for the hardest scenes of “Better Call Saul,” and the way he doesn’t romanticize the dark moments that make this interview more interesting than another tortured Batman acting story. In fact, Odenkirk readily admits that what makes him excel at playing Jimmy might not be good for him:

“If there was one thing that let me do this, it was some access I have to the emotional, even traumatic spaces inside me that maybe isn’t the most healthy person to be.”