Better Call Saul star Bob Odenkirk reveals why he first turned down the Breaking Bad spin-off

He may be about to take a lead turn in Breaking Bad spin-off Better Call Saul, but Bob Odenkirk has revealed that he initially turned down the part.

The US actor was wary of spending time away from his family to film the show about his sleazy lawyer character. Until his teenage son intervened, that is.

“When my son heard I wasn’t doing it he said, ‘You’re going to disappoint a lot of people’,” Odenkirk told Radio Times.

“I said, ‘I’m going to disappoint a lot of strangers’. He said, ‘Well, actually, a lot of them are my friends.’”

Odenkirk, 52, added that he did not ask Breaking Bad creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould to write a series for him and that the whole idea began as a joke.

“While filming Breaking Bad we would say, ‘In a few years when we’re doing the Saul Goodman Show…’” he said. “Then we started to realise, we’re making this joke an awful lot.”

Better Call Saul will follow Saul's life experiences in the build-up to the establishment of his strip-mall law office in Albuquerque.

Rhea Seehorn, Patrick Fabian and Michael McKean also star in the series, available to stream on Netflix from Monday 9 February.