Kevin Costner Recalls Refusing To Cut His Whitney Houston Eulogy For CNN: “They Can Get Over That”
It’s still hard to believe that Whitney Houston, a.k.a The Voice, is gone. Her vocal ability inspired many, as did her down-to-earth personality. It was magnetic for many who came to know her — including Kevin Costner.
Houston and Costner starred in The Bodyguard together 20 years prior to him standing before her family and friends eulogizing her life at New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, NJ. Houston passed on Feb. 11, 2012 — a day before the Grammy Awards — from “accidental drowning” and “effects of atherosclerotic heart disease and cocaine use.” She was 48.
Costner recently appeared on Dax Shepard’s podcast Armchair Expert, where he recalled the heartbreaking day he and seven other people gave tribute to Houston. According to the Hollywood A-lister, he initially “didn’t want to.”
“When she passed away, there was a steady drum beat to hear. She was such a big personality that everybody was going on the air talking,” he shared of learning of Houston’s death, adding that he wasn’t comfortable speaking on her passing so soon.
“That was not my first instinct. Even Arnold, after about five or six days, he goes, ‘Kevin, you need to say something.'”
Costner then detailed getting a call from revered singer and Houston’s cousin, Dionne Warwick, who asked him to speak at the funeral. “I could feel the weight on her. Now it shifted to me. What am I to say about this little girl?” he recalled. “And went back to that church in Newark, and it was filled. It was electric. There was two bands playing. The church was alive. It was like, boom. And it was a bunch of people. It’s the place that made her.”
He went on, “I had been working on this speech. I talked to a friend of mine, Armie, and we’d both written down notes about it. And I tried to compile everything I wanted to do and finally crafted this speech. Now I’m in there and I’m thinking, I really stuck out. And I’m sitting in this row and somebody said, ‘CNN’s here.'”
“‘I go, ‘CNN’s here?’ And they ‘Go, yeah, they wouldn’t mind if your remarks were kept shorter because they’re gonna have commercials,'” he continued. “And I said, ‘They can get over that. They can play the commercial while I’m talking. I don’t care.’ But I’ve come here when I didn’t want to speak, you know, I didn’t want to do two minutes.”
Although Costner and Houston created a bond while filming together, he admitted that he “didn’t feel like [he] was the right guy” to speak at her funeral. He even asked Oprah Winfrey and Diane Sawyer to read his speech.
“I didn’t feel like I was the right guy to go up there, but I did. And there were some people that really wanted to speak and they’re kind of staring daggers at me,” he said. “What was I going to say? And I started and about 17 minutes later I was done.”
Revisit Costner speaking during Houston’s funeral below, and listen to him recall the mournful day here.
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