Bob Odenkirk Says He Learned About His Heart Attack from 'Chart' Made by His Daughter

Bob Odenkirk has his daughter to thank for a speedy recovery following his jarring heart attack three years ago.

The actor, 60, opened up about the days that came after his “small heart attack” on the set of Better Call Saul in July 2021 for the first time as he revealed that his daughter, Erin Odenkirk, played a special role in the aftermath. 

Bob told Entertainment Tonight that Erin, 22, made a “chart” of what had happened to him to ease his confusion when he was in the hospital. 

“Every day I woke up and I didn't know what had happened to me or kind of almost what was happening, and Erin made a nice chart,” he said. “It was her version of the movie Memento, where I could look up and see, ‘you had a heart attack, these people visited, then you came to, you had the surgery.’ ”

Erin, who just released a poetry book with her father, Zilot & Other Important Rhymes, also recalled the challenge of keeping Bob from returning to set. 

"Almost every morning you would wake up and try to get out of bed to go walk to set to finish shooting your scenes," she told the outlet. "That was a big part of the recovery was trying to get you to stay in the room and sleep and not go to work." 

The actor was in the middle of filming the sixth and final season of the hit AMC series when he collapsed on set and quickly turned what his co-star Rhea Seehorn called “bluish-gray.” The set health safety director and assistant director performed CPR and shocked Bob with an automated defibrillator three times before his pulse returned. 

He has no recollection of the episode. "That's its own weirdness," Seehorn told the New York Times of the incident. "You didn't have a near-death experience — you're told you had one."

Following his heart attack, Bob and Erin both feel that their relationship has been strengthened. 

"I'm starting to ask myself what's the best way to spend my time? And being around people I love and having a certain space in my mind to think and to relax is really raising up in my priorities," the actor told PEOPLE in January.

His daughter added, "I think I'm a person who now cares more about appreciating everything, even if moments feel small or regular. Just appreciating them in the moment is really what matters."

As for their new children’s book, Bob said that some of the ideas for the poems date back to Erin and his 24-year-old son Nate’s childhood. 

When they were younger, instead of reading a story before bed, he’d write poems with them. "I really wanted them to be a part of it," Bob explained. "So I would write a line, they would write a line, then we'd finish it together. Or I'd let them start the poem, and then we'd try to find a way through it.”

The Lucky Hank star continued, "They're pretty silly and a lot of them are kind of crazy. But I kept them because some of them weren't just gibberish. Some of them had ideas and I thought, there's a great little book of poems in this.”

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Zilot & Other Important Rhymes is out now.