Every day, we discover that the world of influential people is smaller than we thought. For instance, did you know the actor who played Big Suze in Peep Show is Claudia Winkleman’s sister-in-law (and is married to a royal)?
Well, if you didn’t know that, you probably aren’t aware of this: Bob Odenkirk, the actor behind the lawyer Saul Goodman in Breaking Bad and his spin-off show, Better Call Saul, has just realised he’s related to none other than King Charles.
In a recent episode of the PBS series Finding Your Roots, the actor, who always thought he was of Irish and German descent, discovered that he had royal blood.
How is Bob Odenkirk related to the Royal family?
His mother, Barbara, was the great-great-granddaughter of a French carpenter named François Xavier Fricker.
“I’m part-French? Never heard anything [that would suggest that]! Nothing,” Bob said when he found out, adding, “I wish my mom could hear this. She would have loved this.”
But that wasn’t the royal connection ― this lay on his paternal side, via a five-generations-deep link to Friedrich Carl Steinholz, born in 1755 in Plön, Germany.
Friedrich’s mother was Maria Catharina Bein, who had Friedrich out of wedlock with the Duke of Plön — Odenkirk’s sixth great-grandfather. And, as the aristocratic gene pool was more of a very shallow puddle at the time, the Duke of Plön was related to almost all royal families in Europe.
It’s through this link that Bob is King Charles’ 11th cousin, the show revealed.
Bob’s not really a monarchist
“I’m an American. I’m not a monarchist. I don’t believe in, uh, that,” Bob told the show’s presenter.
“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.”
In fact, he laughed out loud when he found out the link to King Charles. Hey, we can’t choose our family...