“I love to push the limits and try to do things that might hurt me. But that one is not me.”
There is a certain kind of action movie, one that only seems to have really cemented itself in Hollywood in the last few years, that takes a certain kind of actor and transforms them into an actual action star.
It sort of started thanks to Liam Neeson in Taken, but we all kind of knew that he wasn’t really doing a lot of those stunts himself. It transformed further when Keanu Reeves arrived with John Wick, and proved himself a proper stunt-capable action star.
Now it is almost expected for a certain kind of action movie to feature its star doing these impressive stunts, and we’re happy to inform you that Bob Odenkirk – yep, of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul fame – is getting the action hero makeover thanks to his new movie, Nobody.
The fact that the script is written by the same guy behind John Wick will only help further those comparisons, with Odenkirk playing a kind of boring dad and husband who is suddenly triggered into a life of violence following a home invasion.
The movie is filled with violent fight sequences and shoot outs, pretty much all of which Odenkirk literally trained for years to perfect, but there was one particular stunt in the movie that he didn’t do.
Check out our full interview with him right here:
When we chatted about Nobody, we wanted to know if there were any particular scenes or sequences that he knew ahead of time he might want to actively avoid? Odenkirk told us the following:
“I wanted to do my own fighting in this. Police Story by Jackie Chan is my favourite action film, and of course he does all of his own stunts and fighting. So that is why I trained as long as I did, and I felt fairly confident with the personal, one-on-one fighting, because really that is what I trained over and over for.
“Guns were scary to me! Especially when the guns had these blanks in them that are pretty loud, they’re as loud as a bullet if they’re a full load. And I even got ringing in my ears from them. They just scare me Guns are just scary. You gotta respect guns! You gotta be careful around them and show them great respect.
“So, honestly, it was working with the guns, working with the blanks. When I had to hold the gun close to someone’s head, that kind of thing scares me, because those blanks have power, you know?
“But the actual fighting, I loved doing it. And I even love to push the limits and try to do things that might hurt me. I did not…. Oh, I don’t want to wreck the movie on anyone…”
Odenkirk stops himself from describing a particular stunt in Nobody, but having seen it, we knew exactly which one he meant, and it looked incredibly painful. So he continued on a bit, still trying to skate around actually describing the stunt itself:
“That’s not me. And if you notice, next time you see that, watch that his leg gets caught on the window. It was intense. I’m trying to have a limp when I walk away afterwards.”
You can also check out our interviews with Bob’s co-star Connie Nielsen, as well as Nobody’s director Ilya Naishuller and producer Kelly McCormick right here.
Nobody arrives in Irish cinemas on Wednesday, 9 June.
Clip via Universal Ireland
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