Better Call Saul star Bob Odenkirk discovers he’s related to King Charles

‘[It makes me feel] like a part of history that I didn’t think I was any part of’ … Bob Odenkirk in the PBS series Finding Your Roots. Photograph: PBS

There’s very little that’s regal about Saul Goodman, the character Bob Odenkirk is best known for. But despite being famous for playing the slippery, con-loving lawyer in Breaking Bad and its prequel, Better Call Saul, the actor will discover on TV this week that he is related to royalty.

Genealogy-based US television show Finding Your Roots has traced Odenkirk’s family back five generations and found that he is the 11th cousin of King Charles III.

Despite his family hailing from Chicago, ancestry experts on the show will reveal that the actor’s fifth great-grandfather, Friedrich Carl Steinholz, was born in Plön, Germany, in 1755. The host Henry Louis Gates Jr tells Odenkirk that Steinholz was conceived out of wedlock with the Duke of Plön, who was related to the royal families of Europe due to intermarriage. And initially, Odenkirk is not impressed.

“[It makes me feel] like a part of history that I didn’t think I was any part of, but I’m an American. I’m not a monarchist. I don’t believe in that,” Odenkirk says.

“You know, I feel like it’s a little twisted. I understand why society built itself around monarchs and leaders, and they passed them down through generations. I understand that goes through every society, every civilisation.

“But I think that we’ve gotten to a better place with democracy and we should keep going down that road.”

He does, however, take a slightly different approach when informed of his links to the king – and promptly bursts into laughter.

“Well maybe I’ll change my mind on that!” he exclaims. “That’s so funny, man. Oh, that is crazy!” Other clips from the show – which airs on 30 January on PBS in the US – feature Odenkirk laughing and declaring: “Are you kidding me? That’s insane!” as well as announcing that he wishes his mother was able to hear the news.

Odenkirk was raised in an area of Chicago, the second oldest of seven siblings born to Walter Odenkirk and Barbara Mary, Catholics of German and Irish descent. In 2021, he collapsed from a heart attack on the set of Better Call Saul, and only survived due to colleagues resuscitating him.