‘Comedy Writer Body to Action Hero’

Bob Odenkirk could have treated the production of “Nobody 2” as a European vacation. The original draft for the sequel to his 2021 sleeper hit, “Nobody,” had Hutch, the suburban dad/secret mercenary played by Odenkirk, and his wife Becca (Connie Nielsen), getting away from it all in grand style.

“On page one, Hutch is in a gondola and he throws a tarp back, and there’s a whole passel of guns and explosives,” Odenkirk remembers. “My real wife, Naomi, looked at and she said, ‘Wow, this is cool. We get to go to Italy and shoot.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, could be fun.’ And then about three days later, I go, ‘You know what? That’s not what we’re doing. Jason Bourne goes to Italy. James Bond goes to Italy. Hutch doesn’t get to go to Italy, and neither does Bob Odenkirk.’”

Odenkirk felt that kind of lavish foreign setting wasn’t right for his character, an everyman whose schlubby exterior disguises that’s he’s actually a badass killer. So he traded gondolas for duck boats with a story that sends Hutch, Becca and their two kids Brady (Gage Munroe) and Sammy (Paisley Cadorath) to a rundown resort town. It was the kind of place that Odenkirk remembered visiting when he was growing up in the midwest.

“When I was a kid, we went to the Wisconsin Dells,” he says. “It’s one of the few trips I took. They were filled with these little vacation towns for people who can’t afford to go to Disneyland or somewhere like that.”

Only in “Nobody 2,” which opens Aug. 15, instead of eating cotton candy and playing arcade games, Hutch tangles with a gang of bootleggers led by a batshit mob boss named Lendina (Sharon Stone). In one memorable scene, Hutch battles a group of thugs on a duck boat — it’s a ballet of broken bones and shattered teeth that takes place on the most banal setting imaginable. Odenkirk pushed for the scene, which was inspired by Jackie Chan’s “Police Story” franchise, a film series known for its stunts and humor. In the first “Nobody,” Odenkirk, who first made a name for himself in comedies like “Mr. Show With Bob and David” and “The Larry Sanders Show,” wanted to play it straight. This time is different.

“The sequel’s funnier,” he says. “It’s got jokes within the fight. The first one is very earnest or grim, because I felt like, if I’m going to go into this thing, I’m either going to deeply embarrass myself in front of all my friends, or I’m going to pull it off, and then that’s going to blow my friends’ minds, because they’re going to go, ‘Holy shit, he really did do it.’ Obviously you risk looking really stupid, whereas if you do a joke in the fight, then you can go, ‘Hey, I was just kidding. I never meant for you to take it seriously anyways.’”

Odenkirk took getting in shape for “Nobody” very seriously. He trained for two years with stunt coordinator Daniel Bernhardt to make sure he could handle the fight sequences.

“I was trying to turn a comedy writer’s body into an action hero’s body,” Odenkirk says. “I laughed a lot, but it was not a fun laugh. It was an embarrassed kind of red-faced laugh.”

Odenkirk credits the training with helping him survive a heart attack he had on the set of “Better Call Saul” in 2021. And he’s still hitting the gym. He worked out with Bernhardt the day before “Nobody 2” had its world premiere in Los Angeles.

“I put in the hours because I’m kind of nuts that way,” he says. “I can be really determined and unflagging about these things. With the first film, I was challenging myself. When you get older and you turn 50, you think, what can I do that will make me a different person, because I’ve been this guy for long enough.”

Jacked or not, Odenkirk knows he’s not a typical action star. He opted to mold the character of Hutch to his own persona — showing him taking out the garbage in the first film or struggling to connect with his wife while getting the kids ready for school in the second one.

“I’m not cool, I’m not young, I’m not handsome,” Odenkirk says. “What do I have to offer in this genre? Even Jason Statham is a genuinely tough guy. I’m not. But I am relatable. I’m just like you.”