Kevin Costner, Can You Answer More Whitney Houston Questions for Us?

Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston in 'The Bodyguard' (Everett Collection)

As presented in the seminal classic Dante's Inferno, there are nine circles of hell. The first is limbo, second is lust, third is gluttony, and et cetera. The ninth circle of hell is being asked repeatedly about a woman with whom you worked once, in 1992, forever, into eternity.

Kevin Costner is living in the ninth circle of hell.

The actor has been making the press rounds to promote his new film, Black or White. But if there's anything as plain as black and white, it's that the only thing interviewers care to talk to Costner about is Whitney Houston, with whom he co-starred in The Bodyguard.

Each morning, Kevin Costner wakes up and for the next eight to 10 hours (depending on how tightly packed his publicist has scheduled him) he answers a string of questions about Whitney Houston.

Here he is talking to CBS This Morning:

"I had this unique window. I was right there. I held [Whitney Houston's] hand. And I wasn't able to hold her hand after that. And I watched her journey. I watched the spiral. There was two or three times when I was asked to write her letters, that maybe this would have a level of impact on her. I wrote those letters. I never heard back. I was told that she got them. But she went away."

And here he is talking to USA Today about their relationship:

"The Bodyguard was a unique moment in time. The world has difficulty separating us now. She was a star and ultimately a casualty of being a star. It's just sad."

Even freaking Stephen Hawking wanted to talk to Costner about Whitney, as the actor relayed on Jimmy Kimmel Live:

"I was waiting for it, and finally he said, 'I’d like to know about Whitney Houston.' I said, 'Well, you’re just like me. Let’s get to it.' I said, 'You’re not the only one, Steve. A lot of people want to know about Whitney.' I said, 'What do you want to know?' And that was it.”

And then again on The Meredith Vieira Show:

"I didn’t realize in Bodyguard when I wanted Whitney to play that that was such a brave move. It didn’t seem to me to be a brave move [casting the lead roles as an interracial couple] at all. I thought she was the cutest girl I’ve ever seen."

People even asked Costner about Houston's daughter, Bobbi Kristina Brown, who nearly died over the weekend in an incident eerily similar to Houston's death in 2012:

"I was sad, obviously. That family's under a lot of stress right now, just an enormous amount of stress. I can't imagine... I really hope she's okay."

None of this is new. While promoting another project of his, Hatfields & McCoys, in 2012, Costner was bombarded with a series of questions about Houston, who had just passed away. In an interview with CNN:

"If Bobbi [Kristina] wanted to call me, she could. I didn't know that my remarks had an effect on her, but there's a lot of love around her and a lot of support and I think people realize that they have to step in in a very supportive way right now for her and, you know, we live in a world where a lot of eyes are on her, a lot of cameras are going to be on her. ... Maybe just trying to get a good night's sleep would be one of the best things that could possibly happen and I hope that that's happened to her, that she can find that kind of peace right now."

Perhaps Hollywood itself is an allegory telling us that we're all just doomed to repeat the early '90s over and over. Flannel is back in fashion, after all.

Original post found here: https://celebrity.yahoo.com/blogs/celeb-news/reporters-cant-stop-asking-kevin-costner-about-whitney-houston-222929296.html