Kevin Costner is looking back on his emotional tribute to his beloved “Bodyguard” co-star Whitney Houston 12 years later.
Speaking on the “Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard” podcast, the 69-year-old recalled the pressure he felt to give a proper tribute to Houston at her funeral following her death on Feb. 11, 2012.
“I admired her and I didn’t want to do that,” Costner said. “When she died, there was a lot of drumming going on. You know, she was such a big figure that everybody was talking to the wind. And that wasn’t my first instinct.”
Costner said that five or six days after Houston’s death, he was told he had to say something about Houston’s death. But he was not able to say anything until he received a call from Dionne Warwick, who was planning a memorial for Houston.
“I could feel the weight on her, now it’s on me. What am I going to say about this little girl?” Costner said, before describing the energy in the room on the day of Houston’s funeral. “(I) went back to that church in Newark (in New Jersey) and it was packed. It was electric. There were two bands playing, the church was alive. It was like, it exploded!”
Costner recalled that there were “so many people in the church” waiting for his tribute, “I was really out of place.” Sitting in a row waiting for his turn, Costner said someone urged him to shorten his speech, which ended up being 17 minutes long.
He recalled the conversation, saying, “Someone said, ‘CNN is here.’ ‘They won’t mind if your comments are kept short because they’re going to run commercials.’ And I said, ‘They can deal with that. They can run commercials while I’m speaking, I don’t care.'”
TODAY.com contacted CNN for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
He said, “But I came here when I didn’t want to speak and I didn’t even want to speak for two minutes and I prepared this speech.” Then he added, “I didn’t feel like I was the right person to go there, but I went.”
Houston and Costner starred in the 1992 film “The Bodyguard,” which centered around a former U.S. Secret Service agent assigned to protect a famous singer. Speaking about the film, Costner recalled his relationship with the “Greatest Love of All” singer.
“I don’t know what it was, but there was a moment between us and I realized the world had a different perception of us, so I went with it,” he said. “I was her imaginary bodyguard.”
