Kevin Costner Recalls Embracing Friendship With Whitney Houston: ‘I Was Her Imaginary Bodyguard’
Kevin Costner has fond memories of Whitney Houston on the set of their 1992 hit, The Bodyguard.
“I loved her — it's not like this giant mystery — so I knew that she should be the one,” Costner, 69, said of casting Houston in the lead role during the Monday, June 3, episode of the “Armchair Expert” podcast.
The actor recalled director Mick Jackson being “afraid” of Houston, so Costner “started to guide her” and told the late singer “not to bring an entourage” during production.
“And I wasn't trying to usurp my director, but I had made a promise to her, not to f—ing him,” Costner, who also produced the film, explained, noting that he assured Houston the film would perform well at the box office, despite poor test screenings.
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“I was always gonna keep my promise to her,” he added.
Despite Costner requesting that Houston not bring bodyguards offscreen, he told the icon that his demand wouldn’t hinder anyone’s safety. “[I said], ‘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,’” he recalled. “And that's how we started.”
“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 explained. “I was her imaginary bodyguard.”
Elsewhere in the podcast episode, the Yellowstone actor opened up about refusing to shorten Houston’s eulogy after she died at the age of 48 in 2012.
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“I had been working on this speech,” he said. “And I tried to compile everything I wanted to do and finally crafted this speech.”
He recalled: “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.’”
Houston, who had a long history of addiction, was found dead in a bathtub at the Beverly Hilton. The Los Angeles County Coroner's Office later concluded that she died from drowning combined with the "effects of atherosclerotic heart disease and cocaine use."
Houston had been staying at the hotel to perform at Clive Davis' annual pre-Grammys party, which was canceled after her death.
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Three years later, Houston’s daughter, Bobbi Kristina, whom she shared with ex-husband Bobby Brown, died after being found unconscious in a bathtub at age 22.
