Bob Odenkirk On Returning To “Ridiculous” Comedy Post ‘Better Call Saul’ With ‘Guru Nation’ & AMC’s ‘Straight Man’
08.04.2022 - 23:15
/ deadline.com
After playing the gravitas of moral-shifting, slick attorney Saul Goodman on AMC’s 39-Emmy nominated Better Call Saul, Bob Odenkirk, is –to use a line from one of his Mr. Show sketches ready “to blow up the moon” as he pivots back to his comedy roots.
“We are going to blow up the moon, exactly,” beamed Odenkirk about the new mockumentary series, Guru Nation, he’s developing with his Mr. Show collaborator David Cross at Paramount+.
“Guru Nation is ridiculous,” Odenkirk told Deadline last night at the season 6 Hollywood premiere of Better Call Saul, “we’re playing multiple gurus, David and I.”
“We tell the story of some young people as they make their way through these cults,” he described.
Odenkirk is also returning to work with AMC, this time on the series adaptation of the Richard Russo novel Straight Man. In the show, set for a 2023 debut, Odenkirk plays William Henry Devereaux, Jr., the unlikely chairman of the English department in a badly underfunded college in the Pennsylvania rust belt. Aaron Zelman and Paul Lieberstein are adapting the book and would serve as co-showrunners. Odenkirk already read the first script.
“Straight Man is a great script; I love it, I can’t wait to play that part,” said the 2x Emmy winner, “it’s more comical than Better Call Saul. And no guns in it. It’s something, I would love to sink my teeth into and do that comedy”
Odenkirk billed Straight Man as “it’s like if you married The Office and Better Call Saul.“
Yesterday we spoke with Better Call Saul co-creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould at the Hollywood premiere as well, who marveled about Odenkirk’s comeback after suffering a heart attack on set in July last year. Odenkirk would later finish shooting the scene he started that summer in