Kevin Costner refused to shorten his memorable 17-minute eulogy at Whitney Houston's funeral: 'They can get over that'

• Kevin Costner refused to shorten his eulogy at Whitney Houston's 2012 funeral despite requests.
• Costner was initially reluctant to speak but agreed after Dionne Warwick personally asked him.
• Costner's 17-minute eulogy highlighted their bond from "The Bodyguard" and became a viral moment.

On the latest episode of Dax Shepard's "Armchair Expert" podcast, Kevin Costner revealed that moments before he gave his emotional eulogy at Whitney Houston's funeral in 2012, he was asked to shorten his remarks. He refused.

"I'm sitting in this row, and somebody said, 'CNN's here, they wouldn't mind if your remarks were kept shorter because they're going to have commercials,'" recalled Costner, who starred opposite Houston in the hit 1992 movie "The Bodyguard." "And I said, 'They can get over that. They can play the commercial while I'm talking, I don't care.'"

In the days following Houston's death at 48 due to accidental drowning, Costner had been asked to give remarks about his former costar but never accepted. It wasn't until Dionne Warwick, the famous singer who is also Houston's cousin, called him and asked him to speak at Houston's home Baptist church in Newark, New Jersey, that Costner finally accepted.

"The exact thing I didn't want to do, I just said yes," Costner said. "I could feel the weight on her, now it's shifted to me. What am I going to say about this little girl?"

Costner said he spent a week working on what he was going to say.

"I tried to compile everything I wanted to do and finally crafted this speech," he said.

Though he admitted he "really stuck out" being one of the few white people there, and now had to worry that his speech was too long after the remark about CNN covering it, he pushed all that aside.

"It was electric," Costner said thinking back on the setting. "There were two bands playing, the church was alive. It was like, boom!"

Before Costner's moving 17-minute eulogy, few knew just how close he and Houston had been from filming "The Bodyguard" together. Costner revealed in his eulogy that they both bonded over being raised Baptist and that he forced Warner Bros. to postpone production on the movie for a year while Houston was on tour so she could play the role.

When Costner was done at the podium, everyone in the church stood up and applauded.

"I don't know what it was, but we had a moment," Costner said on the podcast, thinking back on working with Houston. "I realized that the world had a higher idea of who we were, and I embraced it; I was her imaginary bodyguard."