Ghostbusters star Ernie Hudson has admitted to feeling “pushed aside” by the film studio behind the 80s classic.
The US actor played Winston Zeddemore in the 1984 film and its 1989 sequel, telling SiriusXM that while the cast and crew of Ghostbusters were “all welcoming and inclusive”, it was a rather different story when it came to Columbia Pictures.
“The studio wasn’t, and the studio continued not to be,” he claimed. ”It made it very, very difficult because I was a part of it but then I very selectively was pushed aside.”
Offering examples of how what he felt were “very deliberate” attempts to sideline him, he pointed out his character was originally supposed to have been in the film from the beginning, but eventually ended up “coming in halfway through the movie”.
“When the posters came out, I’m not on the poster,” he continued. “I went to the 30th anniversary release of the movie and all the posters are three guys.
“Now I know the fans see it differently, and I’m so thankful for the fans because the fans basically identified with Winston – especially young… I don’t want to say ‘minority kids’, but a lot of kids.”
Ernie added that Ghostbusters remains among his most difficult professional experiences because of how he was treated.
“It wasn’t an easy road,” he said. “It was probably the most difficult movie I ever did just from the psychological perspective.
“And 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’ve 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.”
HuffPost UK has contacted Columbia Pictures for comment.
Three decades after the original Ghostbusters film was released, Ernie made a cameo as a new character in the 2016 reboot, and reprised his role as Winston in 2021’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife.
His additional on-screen credits include Oz, Desperate Housewives and the 80s film St Elsewhere.