It's so heartwarming how close Kevin Costner's relationship was with Whitney Houston, even past their work on their film The Bodyguard.
Furthering his press run for his new film Horizon: An American Saga, the actor talks about the relationship he had with the late great singer. Speaking on the Armchair Expert podcast with Dax Shepard, he remembers the eulogy he gave her. He recalls, "I had been working on this speech... and I tried to compile everything I wanted to do and finally crafted this speech. Somebody said, 'CNN's here, they wouldn't mind if your remarks were kept shorter because they're going to have commercials.'" Without a second thought, he scoffs at the idea. "And I said, 'They can get over that. They can play the commercial while I'm talking, I don't care,'" he says.
All in all, Costner makes sure to address everything, cover all the ground. By the end, he estimates his speech to be about 17 minutes long.
How Close Were Whitney and Costner?
The family invites him to Whitney's funeral because of the strength of their relationship. It all begins on the set of their film The Bodyguard. It's a romance film where Houston plays a famous singer with a horrifying stalker. Costner plays her counterpart, a former Secret Service member transitioning to her bodyguard. In time, a formal relationship turns into more time together and a much closer relationship.
Even though the two were close for 20 years, the Dances With Wolves star didn't have it in him to speak at first. He only accepted the responsibility upon singer Dionne Warwick's request. ""I could feel the weight on her, now it's shifted to me," he continues on the podcast. "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. There were two bands playing, the church was alive. It was like, boom!"
The two's on-screen chemistry will live forever, particularly in Whitney's iconic hit song, "I Will Always Love You." In a separate interview, Costner reminisces on the song and what it meant at the time. "I don't think we'll ever forget when that little song came out, that [Houston] just blew up. She sang the first part of it a cappella and musically the world was never the same," he emphasizes. "We have a moment of her in that movie we'll never ever forget that and I think that when movies are working at their best, that's what can happen."
