Kevin Costner refused to shorten his eulogy to Whitney Houston for CNN: ‘They can get over it’

Two days after this conversation, Costner received a phone call from Houston’s cousin, singer Dionne Warwick, who asked him to speak at the funeral.

“I could feel the weight on her. Now it has shifted to me. What should I say about this little girl? » Costner said. “And I went back to this church in Newark, and it was packed. It was electric. There were two bands playing. The church was alive. It was like, boom. And there were a lot of people.”

He continued: “This is the place that created it. And I worked on this speech. I talked to a friend of mine, Armie, and we both took notes about it .And I tried to compile everything I wanted to do and finally wrote this speech.

But the length of Costner’s speech was nearly derailed when he was informed the service would be televised.

“Now I’m in there and I’m thinking, I really stood out. And I’m sitting in this row and someone said, ‘CNN is here.’ I said, “CNN is there?” And they said, “Come on, yeah, they wouldn’t mind if your remarks were shorter because they’re going to have commercials.” put it back.”

He added: “They can play the commercial while I’m talking. I don’t care. But I came here when I didn’t want to talk, you know, I didn’t want to do two minutes.”

Even though Costner spent a week writing his speech, he spotted Oprah Winfrey and Diane Sawyer at the event and asked them to read his speech.

“I didn’t feel like I was the right person to go, but I did. And there were people who really wanted to talk and they were kind of looking daggers at me. What was- I mean? And I started and about 17 minutes later I was done,” he said.

Costner continued to speak on the podcast about his friendship with Houston, whom he met as a castmate on the 1992 drama. The bodyguardin which he plays the main character, Frank Farmer, hired to protect Rachel Marron (Houston).