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Ghostbusters star Ernie Hudson talks moving on from non-inclusive treatment and fears for role in next movie

February 20th, 2023 by Marc Comments

It’s never been a secret that Ernie Hudson’s Winston Zeddemore was screwed over by the studio when it came to making the first Ghostbusters movie.

In the original script for Ghostbusters, Winston was a part of the team from the get-go but when he turned up to film, he learned that he was now relegated to not appearing until much later in the movie.

All this is well chronicled.

Thankfully, that was rectified in Ghostbusters II and by the end of 2021’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Winston was seemingly set up to be a big part of the franchise moving forward as the man who funded Ghostbusters, which may now be a global franchise. And the fans were happy – Winston, always a fan favourite, was finally getting his dues onscreen.

However, it seems the star fears that his Ghostbusters future may not be as bright as he hoped and his treatment on the first movie is something he still finds difficult to move on from.

In a new interview on the Howard Stern Show, watch it below, Hudson talks about his time on Ghostbusters and, even though he’s a man adored by fans and who is never anything short of amazing to those fans, he still feels that he was ill-treated on the first movie and it’s hard to argue.

“They were doing Ghostbusters, and the movie was being made by a lot of people really successful; Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, you know?” the stat says, “They had already made a number of movies, and I was the guy who was brought in. So finding my place in the middle of that, and they were all welcoming and inclusive, the studio wasn’t, and the studio continued not to be. So, it made it very, very difficult because I was a part of, but then, very selectively, I was sort of pushed aside.”

One of the most insulting things about his role in the movie and the importance of his character, was his absence from the movie’s poster, left – an injustice that fans have been angry over for years

“You know, when the posters came out, I was not on the poster. I went to the 30th-anniversary release of the movie, and I was invited to a theater in Chicago to introduce the movie, and I get there, and all the posters are three guys.”

Going on about his attitude toward working, Hudson says that Ghostbusters was not the career-defining moment for him that many probably think it was – or that he hoped it would be: “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 up number one, it’ll change your career,” he says.

“Well, Ghostbusters didn’t do any of that for me. I was working pretty non-stop, I did Ghostbusters, then it was two and a half years before I got another movie. Ghostbusters I would say is probably the most difficult movie I ever did, just from the psychological perspective.

“I got nothing bad to say about anybody, but it was hard, and it was hard for a long time, it probably took me ten, twenty, well, ten years anyways, to finally get past that and just embrace the movie and enjoy the movie. It was very hard. Ghostbusters was very hard to make peace with.”

He’s also fully aware that the role of Winston, the everyman of the story, is an important one for kids, especially, kids who perhaps don’t see characters who look like them as often as they should: “I know the fans see it differently,” he says, “I don’t want to say minority kids, but a lot of kids.”

While all this is known to us here at FTN HQ – we’re Ghostheads since ’84, there’s not much we don’t know at this stage – one thing that did shock us is that Hudson is concerned about his role in the next movie, currently called Ghostbusters: Firehouse, fearing he’s an ‘afterthought’: “It took a long time for the studio, and even now, we’re negotiating a new movie that’s gearing up to start shooting in March, and I’m like, “Guys, you know, there’s a place that I, I’m not an add-on,” so, if I’m going to do it, it has to make sense.”

If it turns out that Winston isn’t front and centre of Ghostbusters: Firehouse, we’ll be very annoyed – Winston’s presence in Ghostbusters: Afterlife went a long way to repair the damage done forty years earlier and seemed to set him up as the most important figure in the franchise, a rise that made sense to fans and to the story – and we’ll want a good explanation from the people behind the movie as to why it’s the case… but we’re positive here at FTN and Ghostbusters is a franchise that has brought us a lot of joy over the years and one that we’d hate to see stumble on something as important as this.

Ernie Husdon deserves more. Winston deserves more. And the fans deserve more.

Take heed, Sony.

Marc is a self-confessed nerd. Ever since seeing Star Wars for the first time around 1979 he’s been an unapologetic fan of the Wars and still believes, with Clone Wars and now Underworld, we are yet to see the best Star Wars. He’s a dad of two who now doesn’t have the time (or money) to collect the amount of toys, comics, movies and books he once did, much to the relief of his long-suffering wife. In the real world he’s a graphic designer. He started Following the Nerd because he was tired of searching a million sites every day for all the best news that he loves and decided to create one place where you can go to get the whole lot. Secretly he longs to be sitting in the cockpit of his YT-1300 Corellian Transport ship with his co-pilot Chewie, roaming the universe, waiting for his next big adventure, but feels just at home watching cartoons with his kids….