The sequel, set three years after the first, has Odenkirk’s Hutch – an assassin-for-hire who was previously an off-the-books government operative – take his family on holiday after spending too much time away on deadly missions. It’s the starting point for a more over-the-top adventure after he falls afoul of the criminal underworld in the small vacation town of Plummerville, but the actor insists the success of these movies is how they still remain rooted in relatable experiences.
He told Zavvi: “Oh, of course I was channelling my own frustrations I’ve had on family vacations in the past. When you have little kids you’re already exhausted, but you’re insisting that you’re going to have a great time on vacation and spend so much time planning it thinking it’s going to be this awesome time.
“Then when you start making your way there, the frustrations start piling up; your kids get sick, you’re late for the plane, and the vacation is filled with anxieties and challenges before you’ve even set off. It was great to act that out in a film and let those little things keep building until Hutch explodes, because one too many things have gone wrong.”
After making the first movie, released back in 2021, Odenkirk kept up his intense workout regime, hoping that he would continue to be an unlikely action star in future films too. His biggest action hero is Jackie Chan, and Nobody 2 leans towards a funnier – but no less brutal – tone reminiscent of the martial arts icon’s early Hong Kong hits which the actor was pushing for, although he admits it was the biggest risk this time around.
“I can’t do the gymnastic things that Jackie has done throughout his career – he's trained since he was a kid, I started training when I was 54! I can’t kick or jump like him, but I wanted to work comedy into the fights like him, and I got to do that here with the Duck Boat fight scene, which is the closest I’ve ever come to a Jackie Chan style fight.
“I’m really proud of it, and thankful that I was allowed to do it. I’m even more thankful that the audiences I’ve talked to so far seem to like it too, as I was initially worried that it would throw off the tone of the movie, as it’s so different to anything in the first Nobody, but it hasn’t bumped on anybody yet.
“That wasn’t the only reason I kept training between movies, before Nobody 2 was even on the horizon, as I discovered from the first one that training for screen fighting is so much more interesting than the normal workout routine. It’s as much about training your brain as it is your body, as you’re moving from boxing to movement workouts, and it’s way more involving than normal exercise.
“Now, the team let me do any action scenes I ask for, which is a change from last time. The only thing they still won’t let me do is the Bruce Lee one-inch punch – I'm not quite at the Bruce Lee standard just yet!”
The other big change with Nobody 2 is that it’s more about Hutch’s relationship with his family, who he locked in the basement when the carnage began in the first movie. This was always the plan, with Odenkirk and co-star Connie Nielsen – who plays wife Becca – speaking about this whilst shooting the first movie, when there wasn’t a concrete plan for a sequel in sight.
“There was a sequence I helped write that was the history of Becca and Hutch where we saw how they met, but I think the only thing that matters from the first Nobody about their relationship was that unspoken understanding between husband and wife. She seemed to already know violence had been a part of his world, and the way that movie ended with her asking if their new home had a basement so she could build a safe room suggests she always knew about his double life – she's a party to it, and is agreeable on it to some level.
“One of the core themes of the first movie for me was being reminded of who your partner is in a long-term relationship or marriage. It’s easy to forget who they were when you met them, how cool and capable they were, as the years wind down, and you only remember that they made the choice to be with you.
“I wanted Nobody 2 to be about Becca reminding Hutch that she was also a kickass person when they met, that she was as much of a free agent, and it was what I most wanted to see onscreen. I told Connie about that, and she was thrilled because she’s been trained for screen fighting since Gladiator; it was something we both wanted to explore since the first movie, and I’m glad we got to act it out.”
Nielsen believes that Becca is an interesting character because her past is still bubbling just under the service and hasn’t been let loose like Hutch’s has.
She told Zavvi: “The way we’re developing Becca is that we’re referring to that shared backstory little by little, slowly unpacking it so you can start to understand how and why this relationship was founded. You start to see the separate talents they have that give them such a unique mixture, and how these very different people have come to understand each other.
“There are a lot of scenes in this film which function as a metaphor for their relationship in a very beautiful way, and I think that’s largely thanks to our incredible director Timo (Tjahjanto) and Bob. They’re such a great team, and they provide a lot of dignity for all the characters to shine in their moment; Bob is a rare male lead who has a lot of generosity and wants to provide space for everyone onscreen.”
The first movie was widely acclaimed but did attract some minor criticism for relegating Nielsen – who has proven herself to be an onscreen badass several times over – to the background once fists started flying. The sequel avoids being a boy’s own adventure, right down to a menacing villain played with campy relish by Sharon Stone, introduced slicing someone up without a care in the world.
Whilst Nielsen is thrilled about this, she rejects any interpretation of the first film as being hyper-masculine, even apologising to me for “sounding like a therapist” after delivering her analysis of how it actually subverted those macho tropes of the action genre.
“The way I see the first film, which is also how I think Bob sees it, is that it’s an expression of male vulnerability, not a power fantasy. That story was rooted in Bob’s experience of impotence in front of an armed robbery in his house, how he struggled not having power in a situation where he wanted to protect his family.
“As well as being a great action movie, Nobody is an interesting movie because it explores the underlying trauma of being a man; it’s about the fantasy of not being vulnerable, which so many men feel because of the worry that they couldn’t do anything if evil were to harm their family. I’d argue it’s anti-macho by directly grappling with that vulnerability, and the way we respond to it.”
Becca is less of an enigma as the movie wraps, but Nielsen believes that a potential third film will dig into her character in a way the first two have only scratched the surface of. More importantly, once we know more about that past, we’re likely to get her in more fight scenes too.
“I keep telling the producers that action scenes are one of my favourite things to do!” she laughed. “But I’m sure we’re going to explore that amazing back story about the circumstances that they met with greater depth.
“They’re professional secret keepers, who live in the middle of the suburbs in the middle of Middle America. They’re invisible people on purpose, but we’re taking it one step at a time to making their history clearer...”
Nobody 2 is released in UK cinemas on Friday, 15th August.
