Bob Odenkirk Talks “Nobody 2” Fight Scenes, Comedy Parallels, and Bloody Hands

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (ABC4) — Bob Odenkirk is no stranger to precise timing, whether it is delivering a razor-sharp punchline or throwing an on-screen punch. Talking with ABC4 Celebrity Interviewer Patrick Beatty, the “Nobody 2” star opens up about the surprising similarities between fight choreography and sketch comedy, why mid-budget action films give him more creative freedom than massive blockbusters, and what really leaves him with bloody hands.

Patrick: With physical comedy, there is a lot of choreography, but I feel like fight choreography… Are there similarities?

Bob Odenkirk: It is weird. When we were shooting the boss fight scene, nobody won. We shot that at night in Winnipeg, and we had planned that fight for a year and a half. I had been a big part of planning it. But you have to make changes and choices when you do these screen fights, because the set is not exactly what you planned. Sometimes something looks better if you do it a different way, and you have to adapt.

It was the most like being a comedy sketch writer of anything I have done in my career outside of writing comedy sketches, and I loved that. I love a room full of people with a problem they have to solve. In this case, it was choreography and visual choices, and I just took to it.

A screen fight is like a comedy sketch. It has to go somewhere. It needs a beginning, a middle, and an end. It moves pretty fast, you build on what has come before, and then you turn it at the end. It fits with everything I trained to do in my first 20 years in show business, which was comedy sketch writing. It just felt the same to me.

Patrick: What hurts more, stunt work or having to rewrite a sketch at the last minute?

Bob Odenkirk: [Laughs] Stunt work. I do not have a clever, counterintuitive response to that. You generally do not get hurt if you have choreographed it well, but at times I always hit my hands on things. Your hands are flying everywhere, and then I end up with bloody hands.

Patrick: Creatively, what can you do with a mid budget film that you probably could not with, say, a 200 million dollar Marvel thing? And what are studios missing from audiences that maybe they should know?

Bob Odenkirk: Well, I think with those huge films, you kind of have to wow audiences from the word go. Now, I think we did that with “Nobody” too, but in a more modestly budgeted film, maybe you just need to connect emotionally with people in the first ten minutes, and hopefully we did that as well. We certainly did that in “Nobody 2.”

The other thing I think we get to do, it is weird, is invent more in the moment. When you are risking that much money, you cannot take chances. But in our case, when we are making a scene, whether it is a fight scene or a dramatic moment in “Nobody 2,” we can go, “Hey, I have a great idea, let us do this,” and change it.

We have more wiggle room to find fun, hilarious, moving moments when we are shooting, because we do not have the threat of blowing so much money. There is not a team of people looking over your shoulder. They let you go, and they let you invent things.