Kevin Costner Recalls Promise He Made To Whitney Houston While Filming ‘The Bodyguard’

Whitney Houston could always count on Kevin Costner to be her “imaginary bodyguard.”

Costner appeared on the June 3 episode of Dax Shepard‘s Armchair Expert podcast, where he looked back on filming the 1992 hit film The Bodyguard alongside Houston, who died in 2012 at the age of 48.

“I loved her. It’s not like this giant mystery,” Costner said, per People. “So I knew that she should be the one.”

Not only did the Yellowstone star play Houston’s love interest and bodyguard in the romantic thriller, but he also produced the film and cast her in the role of superstar Rachel Marron.

Because director Mick Jackson was “afraid” of Houston, Costner was forced to step up to the plate, he said.

“I started to guide her. And I wasn’t trying to usurp my director, but I had made a promise to her, not to fucking him,” he said, referring to the promise he made the singer and her then-manager Clive Davis that she “would be good” in the film despite it testing poorly with audiences at first. “That was my promise to her: she’s always gonna love me in the song. I was always gonna keep my promise to her.”

Costner also recalled telling Houston that she couldn’t have an entourage on set.

“There was a moment where I knew when Whitney came, I said, ‘Look, you can’t have an entourage, but I’m gonna take care of you if there’s a person important to you’ — turned out to be Robyn Crawford  — I said, ‘Let’s have Robyn with you… I don’t have [an entourage] you’re not going to have one,'” he remembered. “And that’s how we started.”

Costner added, “I don’t know what it was, but we had a moment, and I realized that the world had a higher idea of who we were, so I basically embraced it. I was her imaginary bodyguard.”

The former co-stars remained friends until Houston’s tragic death in 2012, with Costner delivering a 17-minute eulogy at her funeral.

“I had been working on this speech … and I tried to compile everything I wanted to do and finally crafted this speech,” he told Shepard, per Variety. “Somebody said, ‘CNN’s here, they wouldn’t mind if your remarks were kept shorter because they’re going to have commercials.’ And I said, ‘They can get over that. They can play the commercial while I’m talking, I don’t care.'”