Denzel Washington looks back fondly on his time working with Whitney Houston.
Washington, 69, and the late multi-hyphenate played Dudley and Julia Biggs in the 1996 film. The preacher’s wife. Nearly 30 years later, Washington shared his experience making the classic with Houston as he reflected on his decades-long career at his African Black Film Festival retrospective on Saturday, June 15.
“I felt like I always wanted to protect her,” he said of the “I Will Always Love You” singer.
Chaz Ebert, host and widow of film critic Roger Ebert, noted, “There was a vulnerability that you saw.”
“So you really got it?” Washington asked in response.
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Ebert, 71, confirmed, and the audience laughed as Washington added, “Well, sure.”
He repeated, “I always felt like I wanted to protect her. You know? She wanted to be so tough, but she really wasn’t. That’s all. Okay.”
The preacher’s wife also starring Courtney B. Vance, Jenifer Lewis, Gregory Hines and Justin Pierre Edmund. Lionel Richie, Loretta Devine and Houston’s mother Cissy Houston also had notable performances. It is a remake of the 1947 film Bishop’s wife.
Houston appears to have developed a close friendship with the cast before her untimely death in February 2012. She died of accidental drowning with heart disease and cocaine use contributing factors. She was 48 years old.
Whitney Houston and Denzel Washington are filming ‘The Preacher’s Wife’.
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Vance, who played Houston’s husband Reverend Henry Biggs in the acclaimed film Penny Marshall, shared with PEOPLE in November that he plays the opposite Bodyguard star greatly influenced his career.
“I loved her so much,” he said. “I was in a state of euphoric shock playing her husband.”
He added: “It was a turning point in my life and Whitney was a big, big part of it.”
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He shared that he didn’t delve too much into her personal life while she was on set, but instead embraced the mutual “respect” they had for each other.
“We were just hanging out on sets together and respecting each other,” Vance said. “But I didn’t go into the depth of what was going on in her life.”
He said he was too devastated to attend her funeral, adding: “Maybe it hurt my spirit. And in my mind I have our time together and it was wonderful.”
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