Bob Odenkirk said he kept ties from Saul Goodman’s wardrobe and that many of the suits were made only for the character — even though the clothes were offered to him and he doesn’t wear suits himself.
“A lot of Saul’s suits and ties were made for Saul only. They offered me stuff, but I don’t wear suits, so I kept the ties,” Odenkirk said, recalling the costume room that helped create the show’s most visible persona. The actor, 63, is still identified in the public mind with the sleazy but persuasive lawyer who anchored better call saul, but he made clear the physical trappings belong more to the character than to him.
He described Saul as “a very earnest guy” with a specific knack: “He’s aware that he has an ability to talk people into things, and talk his way out of things.” That mixture of earnestness and sleight of hand, Odenkirk said, is what made the role resonate and what left him with a wardrobe he felt little need to wear offscreen.
The detail matters because Odenkirk is promoting new work and laying out how he thinks about parts now. He told interviewers he had viewed his film Normal nine or possibly ten times while discussing what he wants from acting. At the same time he has moved into genres that let him channel a different energy: “I have a lot of rage inside me that I get to play out,” he said of his action roles, and added plainly, “It’s better that way.”
That shift is reflected in projects beyond acting. Odenkirk said he has seven songs recorded for an album, a fact that points to an artist scouting other outlets for the same performance instincts that once fed Saul Goodman’s existence on television.
Odenkirk’s anecdotes about physical challenge also read like shorthand for a career that has taken him from late-night comedy rooms to television prestige and the occasional physical test. He recalled hiking the 96-mile West Highland Way in Scotland in 2015 with his daughter and compared it to the Inca Trail, which he called far tougher: the Inca route is a four-day, 27-mile trek that reaches about 13,800ft (4,200 metres), he said, and “the Inca Trail was way harder than the West Highland Way.”
There is tension in what he keeps and what he leaves behind. He accepted some wardrobe pieces but not the full transformation offstage; he kept the ties as artifacts while rejecting the suits in his day-to-day life. He keeps the memory of the character’s tactics — the persuasive, earnest conman — even as he pursues work that lets him be physically and emotionally raw in different ways.
On the subject of Saul’s alter ego, Jimmy McGill, Odenkirk offered a blunt, character-driven prediction: should Jimmy ever get out of prison, “Jimmy McGill would go right back to doing what he did,” he said, though he added Jimmy would “probably avoid dealing with drug dealers this time.” The line is less an announcement than a diagnosis: the impulses that drove the character remain, but Odenkirk sees them tempered by consequences.
That diagnosis is also the answer to an obvious question raised by the ties-in-the-closet image: will Odenkirk return to Saul wholesale? The actor’s own words suggest not. He treats the clothing as a keepsake and the performance as a closed chapter he can visit, not live in. At the same time, his description of the character’s instincts and his acknowledgement that many of the costumes were tailor-made for Saul make it clear the role is not something he simply discards — it is an artifact he honors while he moves on to action films, music and the occasional reflective movie.
In short: Odenkirk kept the ties, declined the suits for himself, and left Saul Goodman on the screen where the character belongs. He will likely remain linked to the role in memory and in wardrobe, but the actor’s next scenes, he says, will be played in different clothes and to different music.
