Bob Odenkirk Explains How ‘Lucky Hank’ Isn’t ‘Better Call Saul 2’: “I Think This Is a Big Swing”

Bob Odenkirk isn’t the type of actor who goes halfway on a role. During an interview for his upcoming AMC series Lucky Hank, Odenkirk pulled out a buck slip he had specially made for the production — a sort of paper insert you would likely see around college campuses.

“I said, ‘Can you have the Latin slogan of the college be, like, it’s something like “to know knowledge?”‘” Odenkirk told Decider. “Just nonsense, generic, garbagey Latin.”

Set in the world of academia, Lucky Hank marks a substantial departure for one of television’s favorite stars. After portraying Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul‘s Saul Goodman for nearly 13 years, Odenkirk is moving away from the world of crime and legal betrayals to portray a role that feels more true to who is now. Based on Richard Russo’s novel Straight Man, the upcoming AMC show follows William “Hank” Devereaux, Jr., a tenured professor and head of the English department.

“Of course, [Straight Man] meant a different thing when [Russo] wrote it,” Odenkirk said. “It did not mean person with heteronormative sex drive. It meant the half of a comedy team that sort of stands there, rolling his eyes at the clown next to him. In Hank’s world, the way he perceives himself, everybody else is a nut and a clown, and he is the only sane one. He is always rolling his eyes and making wisecracks about their silly behavior.”

When asked what drew him to the role after Better Call Saul, Odenkirk listed a myriad of reasons: Lucky Hank is funnier than Better Call Saul; it’s a human comedy without a genre slant; there are no drugs or crimes; it was nice to portray a loving middle-aged married couple, which is still a rarity on TV. But the two reasons he kept returning to were Hank’s age, and the joys of once again working with an ensemble cast.

“This guy is more my age. Saul was, in my mind, was about 15 years younger than me. Obviously, I played him younger than that at times because the story called for it, but, on the outside, he is 40-something years old — maybe he is not even that. At the end of the show, probably, I’m gonna guess he is like 42 or something,” Odenkirk said. “So, just playing a guy that is more my age and a relationship situation that I could relate to. He loves his wife, she loves him. He loves his daughter, they fight, but they love each other.”

Odenkirk was also drawn to the intense “camaraderie and rivalry” of Russo’s world, and the contrast between the main couple on Better Call Saul, versus on Lucky Hank.

“I think Saul too, the hardest part about playing that character, was he was so much younger than me and he was so alone. He was so alone in the world.  He and Kim had a relationship. They had a yearning for each other, for some connection, and I think they shared both those things. They were both total loners, and they both saw in the other person this desire to connect but inability to really share who they were with people and know themselves enough to share themselves. So that is how they were paired up. That is why they were paired up, that is how they felt connected. They saw the same thing in the other person,” Odenkirk said. “But in this case, Lily, played by Mireille Enos, and Hank, genuinely love each other. They have a real dynamic together that is a life-giving one, one that they have been able to make a marriage out of, a good one I would say.”

True to his reputation as one of the internet’s favorite stars, Enos was far from the only cast member Odenkirk took time to praise. The actor also called attention to Diedrich Bader, Cedric Yarbrough, Suzanne Cryer, and Oscar Nuñez. “I mean, just the best people ever,” Odenkirk said. “And this new person, that you have probably never seen, Shannon DeVido, so funny and just steals the screen every time she is on. I love her. “

Because Lucky Hank revolves around a tenured professor who can’t be fired, there’s a delicious push and pull between these highly driven characters and the small, borderline insignificant ways they’re hellbent on proving their worth.

“The fucked up part of it that Richard [Russo] was getting at was that we ask ourselves everyday, am I important? How do I know I am important? And so, in academia, he said, it’s who is going to be the key note speaker? Who is going to get the award? Who got published? Who got published in the most respected journal? Who is going to be on this panel? That is how we judge our worth. So it becomes this dog fight over all these secondary status imprimaturs,” Odenkirk explained. “The funny part is that you’re watching this cage match, it is a cage match of egos. And the thing that I love about it since they are English professors and they work with language, they are all funny. They are all good with language, they are all making wisecracks, they are all able to talk volubly about and characterize each other in fun, smart ways. So, it is like a cast of if everyone in the room was clever. It is a fun scenario. And that is why Richard wrote it, and that is why it attracted Paul Lieberstein and Aaron Zelman”

As for Hank, it’s been nice for Odenkirk to return to a character who trying to be funny rather than being the butt of the joke. “[Saul] was not self-aware funny. There are occasions where he told a joke, especially in Breaking Bad, where he disdained the drug dealers and idiots he had to deal with. But, in general, especially in Better Call Saul, he is not being funny in a self-conscious way. He is funny because we know his character, and we think he is a clown sometimes, which he was,” Odenkirk said. “So this character, Hank Devereaux, Jr, is being funny. He is making wisecracks all day long. It is his go-to response. He would rather give you a witty — or even not so witty — joke response. You can’t nail him down…He is hiding in humor. He is hiding from a lot of things, as it turns out. And we will see that play out in the first season.”  

But more than anything else, Odenkirk seems to see Lucky Hank as a challenge that he is excited to embrace. “Look, these are the hardest things to do, right? Where I think the show is kind of 50/50, comedy-drama, right? Most shows are 70 to 80 percent comedy, 15 to 10 percent drama, or 90 percent drama and 10 percent comedy. To try to divvy it up right down the middle and give equal weight to both things is the hardest thing to do,” Odenkirk said. “I am always going to be the guy who goes, ‘Let’s do the hardest things. Let’s do the hardest, most impossible version of this, or whatever project, that is ahead of me.'”

When we pointed out that most of Odenkirk’s big swings have paid off, he was quick to demure. “Overall, yeah. It is like a great home run hitter has the most strikeouts too,” Odenkirk said. “That is why when people come up to me, they go, ‘You are only in great things,’ I go, ‘No no no, check my IMDB page. Double check. Read it again.’ But this is a great thing. I think this is a big swing that we connected with.”

Lucky Hank premieres on AMC and AMC+ Sunday, March 19 at 9/8c p.m.