Bob Odenkirk Discusses How Hard It Is to ‘Turn a Comedy Writer’s Body Into an Action Hero’s Body’

According to comedy and, now, action great Bob Odenkirk, Nobody can turn a Saturday Night Live writer into a stone-cold killer.

Throughout the history of comedy and drama, accomplished performers in both genres have always wanted to know what life was like on the other side of the fence. That urge for greener grass has long helped SNL to attract A-list movie stars who will slap on a silly costume and try out their best impression in hopes of getting a few laughs to go with their Oscars, but efforts to move in the opposite direction have yielded mixed results. For every Robin Williams who blows us away in Good Will Hunting, there’s a dozen Dane Cooks starring in awful child abduction dramas like the 2011 disaster Answers to Nothing.

Then, even more rare is the comedian who doesn’t just become a dramatic actor, but a bona-fide action star on top of that. Odenkirk is one of the seldom few comics to pull off such a career turn with the Nobody film series, which just released its second installment today. In a conversation with Variety, Odenkirk explained that it took him years to shed the shape of a professional funnyman and become the semi-retired black ops assassin Hutch Mansell.

And it's a good thing, too, that Odenkirk kicked himself into shape for his Jason Bourne arc – the first formidable foe he faced following the two-year training regimen was a widow-maker heart attack.

During the talk, Odenkirk, 62, revealed that, leading up to the filming of the first Nobody, he spent two years training with the movie's stunt coordinator Daniel Bernhardt so that he could perform all the fight scenes himself and not rely too heavily on a stunt double. But, as Odenkirk discussed during the Variety talk, the comedy legend's quest to throw a convincing punch required him to become a punchline.

“I was trying to turn a comedy writer’s body into an action hero’s body,” Odenkirk recalled of that grueling two-year training period. “I laughed a lot, but it was not a fun laugh. It was an embarrassed kind of red-faced laugh.” And, as Odenkirk has previously mentioned, all that exercise ended up being even more valuable in his own life than it ended up being onscreen. Odenkirk accredited his ability to survive a heart attack while on set for Better Call Saul in 2021 to the rigorous training he completed for Nobody.

Thankfully, Odenkirk has the natural work ethic to transition from comedy to action as well as to live long enough to enjoy the rewards. “I put in the hours because I’m kind of nuts that way,” Odenkirk said of his transformation. “I 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’ve been this guy for long enough.”

Becoming an action star this close to retirement age is an accomplishment in itself, and doing so after subjecting your body to 50-plus years of the comedian's diet and exercise is downright unheard-of. Imagine how blown away we would all be if Lionsgate suddenly announced that the next John Wick movie will star David Cross.