Sophia Michaels
Rhea Seehorn had to call out for help when her “Better Call Saul” co-star Bob Odenkirk suddenly collapsed while riding an exercise bike. She, Odenkirk, and Patrick Fabian were taking a break from filming an episode of the show’s final season in 2021, making use of some studio cubicles that they had transformed into their own personalized breakrooms. Seehorn and Fabian witnessed their co-star’s frightening fall. “We ran to catch him because it’s a concrete floor and didn’t want him to hit his head, and then realized that something much bigger was going on,” Seehorn recalled to Variety. “We realized that he was having some kind of cardiac arrest.”
In addition to getting help, Seehorn and Fabian yelled at Odenkirk in an attempt to keep him conscious. On “The Howard Stern Show,” Odenkirk revealed that the show’s health officer shocked him with a defibrillator three times, saying that using the machine more than twice often proves futile. But it got his heart pumping again. The next day, he underwent surgery for plaque buildup in his arteries.
If Seehorn and Fabian hadn’t been around, Odenkirk possibly wouldn’t have gotten those life-saving jolts quickly enough. “He didn’t go to his trailer. If he had, he would be dead, or significantly brain damaged,” Seehorn told Variety. While Odenkirk has no recollection of his co-stars coming to his aid, he said, “It will resonate through the rest of my life, and our friendship will too.”
