10 quick questions for bob odenkirk | members only access

For 12 years, award-winning comedic writer Bob Odenkirk, 60, flexed his dramatic acting muscles playing the iconic role of attorney Saul Goodman (aka Jimmy McGill) in _Breaking Bad_ and 

_Better Call Saul_. In the new AMC+ dramedy _Lucky Hank,_ he switches gears from lawyer to professor as a disgruntled English department chair at an underfunded college in Pennsylvania’s

Rust Belt. You play an English professor in_ Lucky Hank_. Did you ever consider majoring in English? It’s interesting. I wish I majored in English. I didn’t. I majored in broadcasting at

Southern Illinois University. I wanted to be a writer when I was that age, which makes me wonder why I didn’t major in English. As far as writing goes, I never took a class outside of the

normal English class.  Nothing advanced. But I read like crazy. I wanted to be a novelist until I got a glimpse of my writing. I did. I sort of pursued it diligently and then quite naturally

gave it up to write sketch comedy shows, which I of course loved very much. What’s on your reading list? When? This week? I’m reading _Dickens and Prince _by Nick Hornby — really fun. _Real

Estate _by Deborah Levy. _How Proust Can Change Your Life_ by Alain de Botton. _Five Decembers,_ a noir novel by James Kestrel. And well, we’ll just stop there. Oh, Rachel Aviv, her book

_Strangers to Ourselves, _I’m into. As well as, of course, _The New Yorker, _which is the best magazine. DID YOU HAVE A FAVORITE TEACHER? I did have a favorite teacher. It was [Naperville

High School] chemistry teacher Mr. [Lee] Marek, who used to go on [_Late Night With_]_ David Letterman_. Do you remember him? He would do funny experiments. He made Dave laugh. A very clever

guy. An open-minded, fun guy. I didn't like chemistry at all. In fact, it’s the only class I ever got a D in, and he gave it to me, but I still loved him and I loved his class. He

encouraged my playfulness, my silliness. Additionally, I loved my junior high teachers. They were the ones who really gave me a boost as far as going into show business. They let me do all

my reports as performances, as plays that I wrote. I would do them around the school. Odenkirk stars alongside Mireille Enos and Olivia Scott Welch in the new AMC+ dramedy “Lucky Hank.”

Sergei Bachlakov/AMC Your character, Hank, seems to be having a midlife crisis. Having just turned 60, do you know anything about that? Do I? It’s bound to happen. I think it's a

version of the crisis that you have all through life as you reach different levels of growth and change — chapters really — in your life. I think it’s your relationship to life and to how

long we live. I had a heart attack a year and a half ago, and that brought it into focus, but I think everybody has some sense of that — or most people do — and it’s really how you revisit

your existential presence. Like, how you go, _Wait, who am I again?_ People tend to do it around their early 30s and then around 50 again. Those are just moments where you go [in your 30s],

_I'm not going to live forever, and do I want to have a family?_ Or, in the case of your 50s, _What do I want to do with hopefully a good chunk of time to enjoy my life?_