Bob Odenkirk Made 'Nobody' Just to Mess With Adam Sandler and His 'SNL' Friends

Bob Odenkirk’s career pivot from cult sketch comedy to prestige drama and then to unlikely action hero still feels like one of Hollywood’s strangest and best plot twists. Long before Breaking Bad, Odenkirk was best known for Mr. Show, the anarchic, anti-comedy sketch series he co-created with David Cross. As Seth Meyers put it on his Family Trips with the Meyers podcast, knowing Odenkirk from Mr. Show, you wouldn’t exactly “game out” seeing him headline a Broadway production, carry Better Call Saul, or front the Nobody action franchise.

Even Odenkirk himself didn’t believe Nobody was inevitable. He trained for the role for over a year, but figured the movie would probably never happen. His motivation to keep going anyway? Simple. Free personal training.

“I was getting free exercise training, which I need, and that’s good for me,” Odenkirk told Meyers. “Any day now, they’ll call and say, ‘We’re not making that movie so you can stop,’ and I’ll go, ‘Thank you. I got a year of free training. I learned how to move and do different exercises and I pushed myself. And I learned so much.’”

Still, in the back of his mind, Odenkirk was imagining a different payoff. Not box office success, but a very specific audience reaction.

“The whole time I’m training, I’m thinking they’re not going to make it, and that’s OK, but if they do make it, and even if it’s just OK, wait until [Robert] Smigel sees this. Wait until Conan sees it. Wait until [Adam] Sandler sees this. Wait until [David] Spade sees this.”

Those guys will be like, ‘What is on the TV right now? How did he get in that f**king movie? There’s no way!’”

In other words, the action training was an elaborate year-long inside joke. “I was grinning to myself, thinking, ‘Boy, if I pull this off, it will be the funniest thing ever. What a prank.’”

The idea that Nobody exists at all — and that it turned Odenkirk into a credible action star — is almost as wild as imagining Mr. Show’s sketch “Pre-Taped Call-In Show” segueing into a knife fight on a city bus. (Actually, that would be perfectly on brand for Mr. Show)

(And yes, this entire piece was written so I could use my newfound knowledge of Mr. Show to impress my Podjiba co-hosts Dan and Tori.)