Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Tori Preston | Celebrity | August 18, 2025
Did you know that Bob Odenkirk is an uncredited writer on the Nobody movies? I mean, I knew he was a writer — SNL, Mr. Show, etc. — but I missed the fact that he worked on the scripts for Nobody and Nobody 2 alongside screenwriter Derek Kolstad. And why shouldn’t he? Apparently, the movies are inspired by Odenkirk’s own life.
All of this was news to me when I read Odenkirk’s recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, though these tasty tidbits were circulating during the press campaign for the first Nobody movie. That was back in 2021 though, a year into the COVID pandemic, and if “Bob Odenkirk’s life inspired his punch-em-up flick” is the biggest news I missed in my distraction, that’s actually a comfort. Anyway, the inciting incidents of both films — the burglary at Hutch Mansell’s home, and the Mansell family vacation — came from Odenkirk. His home in Los Angeles was broken into (twice!), and that trauma made the fight scenes in the first movie more cathartic for him. As for Nobody 2, the Mansell’s trip to Plummerville is based on his own childhood vacations to the Wisconsin Dells.
Of course, Hutch Mansell is not really based on Bob Odenkirk. I was more interested to hear how Odenkirk used his own life to help inform the plot of the movies, finding points of relatable, real-world friction as springboards for the action. As the lead actor and producer of the movies, it makes sense he’d use his other talents as well to ensure their success.
“I don’t have a writer’s credit, but I was deep into the writing on these films, especially the second film. So I didn’t go home and have a massage and go to sleep. I went home and worked on the next day’s screenplay: what we were going to actually say and do, and what changed and what didn’t work.”
He talks a lot about the process of making the sequel — the worrying amount of weight he lost from the exercise and stress, the number of drafts he worked on, how action sequences are like comedy sketches in a way. He even says he’d be open to coming back for more sequels (though given the mediocre opening weekend box office, I’m not holding my breath). But more than anything, reading about his writing work on the sequel made me think of Jenna Ortega.
No, it’s not really a fair comparison. Odenkirk is a professional writer, and he was seemingly working in cooperation with the credited screenwriter on the drafts. That’s different than what Ortega discussed about making Wednesday, that she would change her lines without the input of the writers when she disagreed with Wednesday’s characterization. Was she unprofessional? Maybe. Were her comments about it on a podcast blown way out of proportion? Probably. Still, you can’t argue with the results. Despite the backlash Ortega received, Wednesday became Netflix’s biggest English-language show ever. She went on to become a producer of the series, and director Tim Burton hired her for Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice as well. Clearly, her input and work ethic speak for themselves (and it helps that she was right about the characterization problems on Wednesday).
It’s not unusual for actors to have notes for writers, or ad lib, or get involved in the development of a script they’ve signed onto. It’s also not unusual for their input to make things worse! The egos involved and the circumstances around that involvement will be different every time. Though I can’t help but think of how charming it sounds when Bob Odenkirk does it, and how offended people got when Jenna Ortega did something awfully similar. Is the difference just that he was involved from the get-go, and she was stuck advocating for her character on the fly? Or is it misogyny? My money’s on both.
