In offering the latest counter to Hollywood’s incessant need to blame literally every problem on some form of bigotry, Ghostbusters franchise star Ernie Hudson says that not only does he disagree with the idea that his being black led to his reduced role in the first film, but that leaping to “blame anything that doesn’t work in your life on racism” is nothing but unproductive.
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For context, a quick trip down memory lane.
Originally, as confirmed by Ghostbusters co-creator Dan Akroyd, the role of Winston Zeddemore was originally intended to go to comedian Eddie Murphy.
However, thanks to schedule conflicts related to his work on Beverly Hills Cop, Murphy ultimately had to decline the offer. As such, the role would eventually go to Hudson.
But despite the fact that the character was seemingly intended for a celebrity as big as Murphy, as fans who have seen the final cut of the film can attest, he is barely even a presence in the first Ghostbusters, having easily the least amount of screentime by far among the core team and even being noticeably absent from the the film’s domestic and international release posters.
And according to Hudson, this dissonance is due to the fact that, at the very last second, the film’s production studio, Columbia Pictures, decided to reduce his role in order to give co-star Bill Murray more screen time.
“When I originally got the script, the character of Winston was amazing and I thought it would be career-changing,” he recalled to Entertainment Weekly in 2014. “The character came in right at the very beginning of the movie and had an elaborate background: he was an Air Force major something, a demolitions guy. It was great.”
In light of finding both the character and the potential chance for recognition to be appealing, Hudson said that when the Ghostbusters team “came in at only half of my quote, because they said this role was going to make my career,” rather than rejecting the offer, he “said to my agent, ‘I don’t care. Just take it, because I believe that.'”
Unfortunately, despite having agreed to his reduced rate under the assumption that he would have played the ‘original version’ of Zeddmore, the actor noted that “The night before filming begins, however, I get this new script and it was shocking. The character was gone. Instead of coming in at the very beginning of the movie, like page 8, the character came in on page 68 after the Ghostbusters were established. His elaborate background was all gone, replaced by me walking in and saying, “If there’s a steady paycheck in it, I’ll believe anything you say.” So that was pretty devastating.”
“I’m panicked,” Hudson elaborated. “I don’t sleep that night. It was like my worst nightmare is happening. The next morning, I rush to the set and plead my case. And [director] Ivan [Reitman] basically says, ‘The studio felt that they had Bill Murray, so they wanted to give him more stuff to do.’ I go, ‘Okay, I understand that, but can I even be there when they’re established?’ And of course, he said no, there’s nothing to do about it. It was kind of awkward, and it became sort of the elephant in the room.”
“I see this differently now—and I don’t mean any kind of animosity or anything towards anyone, certainly not towards Ivan or the guys,” he then assured the outlet. “I was a single dad, and we were struggling to kind of hold on and pay the rent. I still needed to do this job. 30 years later, I look back at the movie and it works very well the way it is. I think the character works with what he has to work with. But I’ve always felt like, “Man, if I could’ve played that original character…”
And it was in reference to this debacle that, when pressed by said the actor, ‘s Louis Chilton following the premiere of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire as to whether he thought racism played a crucial part in the shrinking of both his role in the film and his paycheck, Hudson sought to make it clear that he found that entire line of argument to be entirely reductive.
“You know, being a person of African descent anywhere in the world, we’re all just learning how to live together and get along together and realise that we’re all connected,” said Hudson. “And it’s very tempting, sometimes, to blame anything that doesn’t work in your life on racism. But there are a lot of things that play into it. It’s not quite that simple.”
“We can say it’s a racial thing, but I think if Eddie Murphy had played the role I played, he would have been paid very well,” he further argued. “I think studios are in the business of making money and they pay what they feel they have to.”
