Kevin Costner recalls forming a friendship with Whitney Houston

Kevin Costner has good 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 she would have to be the one,” Costner, 69, said of casting Houston in the lead role during the episode from Monday, June 3 of the “Armchair Expert” podcast. .

The actor called back the director Michael Jackson being “afraid” of Houston, Costner “started mentoring her” and told the late singer “not to bring an entourage” during production.

“And I wasn’t trying to impersonate my director, but I made a promise to him that I wouldn’t screw him over,” Costner, who also produced the film, explained, noting that he assured Houston that the film would work. well at the box office, despite poor test screenings.

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“I was always going to keep my promise to her,” he added.

Although Costner asked Houston not to bring the bodyguards off screen, he told the icon that his request would not interfere with anyone’s safety. “(I said): ‘I will take care of you if there is someone important to you’ – turned out to be Robyn Crawford “I said, ‘Let’s have Robyn with you,'” he recalls. “And that’s how we started.”

“I don’t know what it was, but we had a moment and I realized the world had a better idea of ​​who we were, so I basically embraced it,” he explained. “I was his imaginary bodyguard.”

Elsewhere in the podcast episode, the Yellow stone The actor said he refused to shorten Houston’s eulogy after her death 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 I finally wrote this speech.”

He recalls: “Someone said, ‘CNN is here, they wouldn’t mind if your remarks were shorter because they’re going to have commercials.’ And I said, “They can get over it.” They can play the ad 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 was staying at the hotel to perform at Clive Davis’ annual pre-Grammys party, which was canceled after his death.

Three years later, Houston’s daughter, Bobbi Kristinathat she shared with her ex-husband Bobby Browndied after being found unconscious in a bathtub at the age of 22.