TV and film leading man Kevin Costner divulged this week that when he gave the eulogy at Whitney Houston’s 2012 funeral he rebuffed CNN when the idea was floated that he should shorten his remarks, so the network could cash in on ads.
The “Yellowstone” star, who starred alongside Houston in the 1992 smash hit film “The Bodyguard,” said he didn’t care about the network’s bottom line.
During an interview on Dax Shepard’s podcast “Armchair Expert,” the subject of his and Whitney’s film and Costner’s lengthy eulogy came up.
Costner, who became lifelong friends with Houston after the film came out, told Shepard how he crafted the eulogy and how someone asked him on behalf of the far-left network to shorten it.
“I had been working on this speech,” he said. “I tried to compile everything I wanted to do and finally crafted this speech,”
The actor added, “Somebody said, ‘CNN’s here … they wouldn’t mind if your remarks were kept shorter because they’re going to have commercials.’”
Costner continued, “I said, ‘They can get over that. They can play the commercial while I’m talking, I don’t care.’”
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The star ultimately gave a 17-minute eulogy, which at first he was unsure about delivering. He only spoke at the insistence of actress and singer Dionne Warwick.
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Costner also offered a little bit about how he felt while remembering Houston, who died at age 48, at her New Jersey funeral.
“I could feel the weight on her, now it’s shifted to me,” he said. “What am I going to say about this little girl? [I] went back to that church in Newark, and it was filled. It was electric.”
He concluded, “There were two bands playing. The church was alive. It was like, boom!”
During Houston’s funeral, Costner explained that Houston’s hit single “I Will Always Love You” almost did not make it into “The Bodyguard.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be in the movie,” he told mourners. “The first choice was going to be ‘What Becomes of a Broken Heart.’”
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Costner followed up the anecdote by asking, “So what becomes of our broken hearts?”
As Variety noted, “I Will Always Love You” drove the film’s soundtrack to the top of the charts, and 32 years later it remains the best-selling film soundtrack of all time.
Costner also said at Houson’s funeral that people might have been asking themselves what he could have ever had in common with her.
“We both grew up in the Baptist church,” he said to applause.
