Bob Odenkirk loves playing a “dope” and someone you “underestimate.”
The “Better Call Saul” alum has in part built the latter half of his career out of playing that kind of guy – most famously as Saul Goodman in “Breaking Bad” and the aforementioned prequel spinoff. More recently, Odenkirk has brought that love of playing a dope to the action genre in films like “Nobody” and its sequel.
Now, there’s “Normal,” a new action flick from “Nobody” screenwriter Derek Kolstad co-writing with Odenkirk that premiered this week at the Toronto International Film Festival.
“I love it. I love playing a person you underestimate and a person who’s thinking a lot, but not saying much,” Odenkirk told TheWrap at this year’s TIFF. “Not sharing his worries and concerns. I mean, you see him in this movie, in this story, he’s kind of doing this paperwork thing. That’s what he’s doing in the office.”
He added: “It’s great fun to play somebody who’s underestimated. And in the case of Ulysses, in this film, he’s got this inner turmoil where he’s sort of trying not to see anything off about this place or any place. He feels that in his past he’s trusted his instincts and they led him astray. So he’s trying to ignore his instincts that there’s something really wrong in this town.”
The film follows the new temporary sheriff of a small Midwest town who begins to uncover dark mysteries after a series of bank robberies unearth secrets.
Odenkirk re-teamed with “Nobody” scribe Derek Kolstad for “Normal.” On top of starring in the new film, he also co-wrote it after Kolstad presented him with three script ideas and “Normal” became the one he latched on to.
“We were on the first ‘Nobody,’ and Bob and I had instantly become, you know, great partners, and at that point friends, and I had sent him three ideas of what could be next,” Kolstad said. “‘Normal’ was the one that he picked, going, ‘I like the mystery here.’ Our bandwidth got crazy, and eventually we circled back, and we blew up the treatment, rebuilt it to the script. Got Ben [Wheatley to direct], and here we are. It’s that simple.”
Catch up on all of TheWrap’s TIFF coverage here.
