{"id":71990,"date":"2025-08-15T16:19:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-15T16:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/71990\/"},"modified":"2025-08-15T16:19:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-15T16:19:09","slug":"comedy-writer-body-to-action-hero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/71990\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Comedy Writer Body to Action Hero’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tBob Odenkirk<\/a> could have treated the production of \u201cNobody 2<\/a>\u201d as a European vacation. The original draft for the sequel to his 2021 sleeper hit, \u201cNobody,\u201d had Hutch, the suburban dad\/secret mercenary played by Odenkirk, and his wife Becca (Connie Nielsen), getting away from it all in grand style. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOn page one, Hutch is in a gondola and he throws a tarp back, and there\u2019s a whole passel of guns and explosives,\u201d Odenkirk remembers. \u201cMy real wife, Naomi, looked at and she said, \u2018Wow, this is cool. We get to go to Italy and shoot.\u2019 And I was like, \u2018Yeah, could be fun.\u2019 And then about three days later, I go, \u2018You know what? That\u2019s not what we\u2019re doing. Jason Bourne goes to Italy. James Bond goes to Italy. Hutch doesn\u2019t get to go to Italy, and neither does Bob Odenkirk.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOdenkirk felt that kind of lavish foreign setting wasn\u2019t right for his character, an everyman whose schlubby exterior disguises that\u2019s he\u2019s actually a badass killer. So he traded gondolas for duck boats with a story that sends Hutch, Becca and their two kids Brady (Gage Munroe) and Sammy (Paisley Cadorath) to a rundown resort town. It was the kind of place that Odenkirk remembered visiting when he was growing up in the midwest. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen I was a kid, we went to the Wisconsin Dells,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s one of the few trips I took. They were filled with these little vacation towns for people who can\u2019t afford to go to Disneyland or somewhere like that.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tOnly in \u201cNobody 2,\u201d which opens Aug. 15, instead of eating cotton candy and playing arcade games, Hutch tangles with a gang of bootleggers led by a batshit mob boss named Lendina (Sharon Stone). In one memorable scene, Hutch battles a group of thugs on a duck boat \u2014 it\u2019s a ballet of broken bones and shattered teeth that takes place on the most banal setting imaginable. Odenkirk pushed for the scene, which was inspired by Jackie Chan\u2019s \u201cPolice Story\u201d franchise, a film series known for its stunts and humor. In the first \u201cNobody,\u201d Odenkirk, who first made a name for himself in comedies like \u201cMr. Show With Bob and David\u201d and \u201cThe Larry Sanders Show,\u201d wanted to play it straight. This time is different.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe sequel\u2019s funnier,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s got jokes within the fight. The first one is very earnest or grim, because I felt like, if I\u2019m going to go into this thing, I\u2019m either going to deeply embarrass myself in front of all my friends, or I\u2019m going to pull it off, and then that\u2019s going to blow my friends\u2019 minds, because they\u2019re going to go, \u2018Holy shit, he really did do it.\u2019 Obviously you risk looking really stupid, whereas if you do a joke in the fight, then you can go, \u2018Hey, I was just kidding. I never meant for you to take it seriously anyways.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOdenkirk took getting in shape for \u201cNobody\u201d very seriously. He trained for two years with stunt coordinator Daniel Bernhardt to make sure he could handle the fight sequences. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was trying to turn a comedy writer\u2019s body into an action hero\u2019s body,\u201d Odenkirk says. \u201cI laughed a lot, but it was not a fun laugh. It was an embarrassed kind of red-faced laugh.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOdenkirk credits the training with helping him survive a heart attack he had on the set of \u201cBetter Call Saul\u201d in 2021. And he\u2019s still hitting the gym. He worked out with Bernhardt the day before \u201cNobody 2\u201d had its world premiere in Los Angeles. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI put in the hours because I\u2019m kind of nuts that way,\u201d he says. \u201cI can be really determined and unflagging about these things. With the first film, I was challenging myself. When you get older and you turn 50, you think, what can I do that will make me a different person, because I\u2019ve been this guy for long enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tJacked or not, Odenkirk knows he\u2019s not a typical action star. He opted to mold the character of Hutch to his own persona \u2014 showing him taking out the garbage in the first film or struggling to connect with his wife while getting the kids ready for school in the second one. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m not cool, I\u2019m not young, I\u2019m not handsome,\u201d Odenkirk says. \u201cWhat do I have to offer in this genre? Even Jason Statham is a genuinely tough guy. I\u2019m not. But I am relatable. I\u2019m just like you.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bob Odenkirk could have treated the production of \u201cNobody 2\u201d as a European vacation. The original draft for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[17633,49,48,75,337,43907],"class_list":{"0":"post-71990","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-bob-odenkirk","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-nobody-2"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}