If you can read this, thank a teacher. Exactly which teacher to thank was the question we put to Bob Odenkirk and Mireille Enos, who star as a married couple with academic careers in AMC‘s Lucky Hank.
In the new one-hour comedy, Odenkirk plays the titular Hank Devereux, a disillusioned college professor, and Enos is his more upbeat wife Lily, a high school vice principal. But which real-life chalk-slingers influenced these actors the most?
For Odenkirk, it was the three teachers who team-taught his junior high English class in Naperville, Illinois. They encouraged him to do what he was good at. “They let me, all year, put on little plays I wrote, for my project. One was about Abraham Lincoln, one was [about] the country of Ghana, one was [about] the Chicago Fire. I told a story by writing a play and having other students act in it with me, and of course, that became my life and my career. At the time, I didn’t think that, I just knew I loved writing those, rehearsing those, and putting them on,” the actor says.
Enos shares that, at the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston, Texas, her class was overshadowed by the talented class ahead of them. “We were the forgotten class. We were scrappy,” she admits. It took one person to boost their confidence. “My junior year this woman showed up, Susie Phillips. And she just scooped us up and her mantra was, ‘You, in all your weirdness, exactly where you are, is enough. And it changed my life.’”
A+ to those teachers! But one school subject not on Odenkirk’s most-beloved list: algebra. “Whoever started it is a jerk,” the actor deadpans. “I’d like to meet the guy who started doing algebra: go back in time and just go ‘could you not?’”
Check out the video for more from both stars on their school days.
Lucky Hank, Series Premiere, Sunday, March 19, 9/8c, AMC, IFC, Sundance Channel, and BBC America
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