Bob Odenkirk, the Chicago-raised star of “Better Call Saul” and “Breaking Bad,” is narrating the audiobook version of superagent Ari Emanuel’s upcoming memoir, “Roll the Calls.” But according to Page Six, the actor is not mentioned anywhere in the book itself, despite being one of Emanuel’s earliest and longest-running clients.
An insider told Page Six that Emanuel chose Odenkirk carefully as narrator. Part of the appeal was that Odenkirk, like Emanuel, is from Chicago and has the right accent for the job. “Ari is a voracious audiobook listener, so the choice of narrator was a highly considered process,” the insider said. “The most important thing was finding someone who could capture his voice and personality. Bob did so perfectly.”
Yet the finished book, published by Knopf, name-checks Quentin Tarantino, Denzel Washington, Martin Scorsese and Oprah Winfrey, and features WME client Billie Eilish on the jacket copy. Odenkirk, who has been an Emanuel client since the days of the sketch show “Mr. Show,” doesn’t appear at all.
A friend of Odenkirk’s called the omission surprising. “Bob wasn’t mentioned?!” the friend said. “He’s a foundational client.”
Another source close to the actor said Odenkirk wasn’t bothered by it. “Bob loved the book and learning more about Ari and how he focused his way through the business,” the source told Page Six Hollywood. “He is certainly not upset about not being included. If anything, he feels that Ari got to save something about Bob for book No. 2.”
Odenkirk seemed genuinely moved while recording the audiobook, with Emanuel watching from the studio as he read the final pages. In an Instagram post, Odenkirk wrote: “We both got choked up, because we’ve known each other forever, and because: Life! Ari’s been my agent, my friend, since the days of ‘Mr. Show,’ and he’s always been a character, but I didn’t realize how much until I read his whole crazy story.”
He added: “It’s really the perfect book for this moment in which we find ourselves, because it shows how you have to be a little crazy to survive this crazy world. But you know what? You can say Ari was out of his mind to make 300 calls a day, fighting for his clients and building his empire, or you can say that was his genius.”
Odenkirk joked that he would have preferred the title “Better Call Ari” to “Roll the Calls.” WME is reportedly representing screen adaptation rights for the book.
Notably absent from consideration for the narrator job was Jeremy Piven, who played the Emanuel-inspired character Ari Gold for eight seasons on HBO’s “Entourage” and won three consecutive Emmys for the role between 2006 and 2008. Piven faced sexual misconduct allegations in 2017 and 2018, which he has denied; he took a polygraph test that he said he passed. Emanuel instead turned to Odenkirk, also an Emmy winner, to tell his story.
