Kevin Costner is looking back at his emotional eulogy to his beloved “Bodyguard” co-star Whitney Houston 12 years later.
Appearing on the “Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard” podcast, the 69-year-old recalled the pressure of properly paying tribute to Houston at her funeral days after her death on Feb. 11, 2012.
“I eulogized her and I didn’t want to,” Costner explained. “When she passed away, there was a steady drumbeat to hear. You know, she was such a big personality that everybody was going on the air talking. And that was not my first instinct.”
Costner said that five or six days after Houston died, he was being told that he needed to say something regarding her passing. But it wasn’t until he received a call from Dionne Warwick, who was planning a memorial for Houston, that he felt able to speak.
“I could feel the weight on her, now it’s shifted to me. What am I going to say about this little girl?” Costner said, before explaining the energy in the room the day of Houston’s funeral. “(I) went back to that church in Newark (in New Jersey) and it was filled. It was electric. There were two bands playing, the church was alive. It was like, boom!”
With “a bunch of people” filling the church awaiting his tribute, Costner recalled, “I really stuck out.” While sitting in a row waiting his turn, Costner said someone approached him requesting that he shorten his speech, which turned out to be 17 minutes long.
“Somebody said, ‘CNN’s here,’” he began, recalling their conversation. “‘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.’”
TODAY.com has reached out to CNN for comment, but had not heard back by the time of publication.
“But I’ve come here when I didn’t want to speak and I didn’t want to do two minutes and I crafted this speech,” he said, then adding, “I didn’t feel like I was the right guy to go up there, but I did.”
Houston and Costner starred in the 1992 film “The Bodyguard,” which centered around a former U.S. Secret Service agent hired to protect a famous singer. Speaking about the movie, Costner recalled the connection he shared with the “Greatest Love of All” singer.
“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,” he said. “I was her imaginary bodyguard.”
