AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Each week, a guest draws a card from NPR's Wild Card deck and answers a big question about their life. Bob Odenkirk has range. The "Better Call Saul" star has acted in comedies, dramas, even on Broadway. And now he is a bona fide action star. His latest contribution to the genre is called "Normal." He says action films like this one serve a kind of moral purpose.
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BOB ODENKIRK: We live in a world that we know has - is all gray area, and we know as we go through life we can get rageful and angry, but probably that person that we're rageful and angry at does not deserve our rage or our anger. They probably are a human like us. And so there's no place for us to put our anger that deserves our anger. But in a movie, you can invent a pure evil creation, and then it's worthy of this violence that you get to act out in a movie.
CHANG: Odenkirk spoke with Wild Card host Rachel Martin.
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RACHEL MARTIN: How big a role does fear play in your life?
ODENKIRK: Well, it should play a bigger role. I say, yes, I'll do something that I should be afraid of, and then I get to work on it and then fear kind of creeps in. You know, Broadway, doing "Glengarry Glen Ross"...
MARTIN: Yeah.
ODENKIRK: ...On Broadway is a play I knew I wanted to do.
MARTIN: Scary, though, I imagine.
ODENKIRK: But the scary part didn't hit me until I'm doing it and I'm on Broadway. And it's - you know, and it sort of lingered for weeks and weeks. And in the end, I did it. I got nominated for a Tony. I feel confident now after, you know, four months doing that on stage, and I'm excited to do more Broadway at some point, or just more theater. And...
MARTIN: May I ask you about your heart attack? Because it seems like that would be...
ODENKIRK: Sure.
MARTIN: ...Very scary and it would have - you had a heart attack when you were on the set of "Better Call Saul." And it seemed like you could either be very fearful or you could just say, I only have so many days in this world, and so I'm just going to live every second and take all the risks.
ODENKIRK: I didn't have the experience that a lot of people have where they see their life flash before their eyes or they have some kind of slideshow of their regrets or something. There was very little trauma for me. What there was, was there was this lingering joy that I felt upon sort of resuming consciousness a week later that stuck with me for a couple of weeks, but that I also could feel was going away and would go away, but that I remember thinking, I have to remember this. I have to try to live this way. I have to try to see the world this way. But it - this feeling of the world being pretty magical and beautiful and astounding - a marvel to look at. And I remember thinking, this is the best, and this is how you should feel. This is what life is. This is life.
CHANG: You can watch the full conversation with Bob Odenkirk on YouTube - @NPRWildCard. His new movie, "Normal," is in theaters Friday. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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