Screen legend Ernie Hudson had some things to get off his chest when speaking about Columbia Pictures and the making of the Ghostbusters franchise. Hudson – who played Winston Zeddemore, the only Black Ghostbuster – was famously left off the movie’s poster. But it was more the promotional material that Columbia changed when Hudson signed on to the project.
On the Howard Stern Wrap-Up Show, Hudson spoke with Gary Dell’Abate and Rahsaan Rogers about his treatment while making the franchise. In the interview, he professed his admiration for director Ivan Reitman and his co-stars Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, and Bill Murray, saying, “they were all welcoming and inclusive.” It was Columbia Pictures who was not.
Hudson felt that he was “selectively was pushed aside” by the studio. In the original script, for instance, Winston’s character was introduced at the movie’s beginning. But when Hudson was casted, Winston did not appear until halfway through the film. “It definitely felt deliberate,” Hudson had to say about his character being sidestepped. He called the experience “the most difficult movie I ever did, just from the psychological perspective.”
He summed up his feelings by saying, “I’m still not trying to take it personally. If you’re African American in this country, anything bad happens to you, you can always blame it on ‘because I’m Black.’ You don’t want to go there. That’s the last thing I want to do. I got nothing bad to say about anybody, but it was hard. It took me 10 years to get past that and enjoy the movie and just embrace the movie. Ghostbusters was really hard to make peace with it.”
He also spoke about his struggles securing work after Ghostbusters came out, saying, “when you start out in the business, I was always told it’s almost impossible to succeed. But if you get in a major movie from a major studio, and it comes out, and it opens number one, it will change your career. Well, Ghostbusters didn’t do any of that for me. I was working pretty nonstop. I did Ghostbusters, and it was two and a half years before I got another movie.”
The actor is currently in negotiations for a new Ghostbusters movie, set to start shooting in March. Hudson wants to ensure he is not treated as “an add-on.” Saying, “if I’m going to do it, it has to make sense.”
Leave a Comment