He’ll always be her bodyguard.
Kevin Costner spoke about his bond with his late “The Bodyguard” co-star Whitney Houston on Dax Shepard’s podcast, and revealed that he refused to shorten his eulogy at the singer’s 2012 funeral.
“I could feel the weight on her, now it’s shifted to me. What am I gonna say about this little girl?” Costner, 69, recalled on the June 3 episode of “Armchair Expert.”
“And then I went back to that church in Newark and it was filled,” he said. “It was electric. There were two bands playing, the church was alive. It was like boom!”
Costner said he was encouraged to deliver the eulogy by Dionne Warwick, but he got nervous because stars like Oprah Winfrey and Diane Sawyer were in the audience.
“I had been working on this speech … and I tried to compile everything I wanted to do and finally crafted this speech,” he explained. “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.’ “
The “Yellowstone” star noted that his eulogy lasted 17 minutes, and he said everything that he “needed to say” about Houston.
Costner and Houston were co-stars in the 1992 romantic thriller “The Bodyguard,” where Costner played a former US Secret Service agent who is hired to protect a former actress and singer (Houston) from a stalker.
Twenty years after the film came out, Houston died at the age of 48 from an accidental drowning and suspected drug use.
Costner remembered his late co-star fondly when he delivered his emotional eulogy at her funeral.
“Whitney returns home today, to the place where it all began, and I urge us all, inside and outside, across the nation and around the world, to dry our tears, suspend our sorrow, and perhaps our anger, just long enough, just long enough to remember the sweet miracle of Whitney,” he said at the time.
On the “Armchair Expert” podcast, Costner revealed that he picked Houston for the lead female role in “The Bodyguard” because he “knew that she should be the one.”
“I started to guide her. And I wasn’t trying to usurp my director, but I had made a promise to her, not to f – – king him,” Costner remembered.
The Oscar winner also said that he promised Houston that her song “I Will Always Love You,” written by Dolly Parton, would be in the movie.
The track went on to become one of the best-selling singles of all time, spend 14 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and earn Houston two Grammy Awards.
“She’s always gonna love me, in the song. I was always gonna keep my promise to her,” Costner said.
