Ghostbusters Star Ernie Hudson Recalls Being "Selectively Pushed Aside" by the Studio

There are four Ghostbusters in the original 1984 comedy — Bill Murray's Peter Venkman, Dan Aykroyd's Ray Stantz, Harold Ramis' Egon Spengler, and Ernie Hudson's Winston Zeddemore — but you might not know it by looking at the poster. Along with the iconic "no ghost" logo poster, Columbia Pictures advertised its summer "supernatural spectacular" with the ghost-bustin' trio "here to save the world": Spengler, Stantz, and a front-and-center Venkman. Top billing was given to Saturday Night Live stars Murray and Aykroyd alongside Sigourney Weaver of Alien fame, with Ramis and co-star Rick Moranis receiving "also starring" credits. There is no mention of Hudson or Winston, who would be the fourth and final member of the team. 

In a new interview on The Howard Stern Wrap Up Show, Hudson recalled being "pushed aside" during the making of the second-highest-grossing movie of 1984.

Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman was "a brilliant man and I have just so much love and appreciation for him," said Hudson. The actor was less fond of studio Columbia Pictures, which was then a recent acquisition of The Coca Cola Company.

"I was the guy who was brought in, and so finding my place in the middle of that... and they were all welcoming and inclusive," Hudson said of his co-stars. "The studio wasn't, and the studio continued not to be. So it made it very, very difficult because I was a part of it but then I very selectively was pushed aside."

Hudson continued: "When the posters came out, I'm not on the poster. It took a long time. 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."

A 1983-dated draft of the original script written by Aykroyd and Ramis described Winston as a five-year U.S. Air Force Air Police Captain with an extensive and impressive resume. But when SNL alum Eddie Murphy passed on Ghostbusters to star in Beverly Hills Cop, the reworked script introduced Winston in a reduced role — as a skeptic hired hand and everyman who famously tells the three guys, "If there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe anything you say."

"The original script, Winston was in the very beginning of the movie. By the time we got ready to shoot the movie, Winston came in halfway through the movie," Hudson recalled. "All those things…It definitely felt deliberate. And I'm still not trying to take it personally. Anything bad, 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."

He continued, "I 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 it."

Hudson reprised his role in the 1989 sequel, Ghostbusters II, and made a cameo as Bill Jenkins — the uncle of Ghostbuster Patty Tolan (Leslie Jones) — in Paul Feig's female-fronted reboot in 2016. Hudson, Murray, and Aykroyd returned to their roles in 2021's Ghostbusters: Afterlife, director Jason Reitman's sequel set in the same continuity as the original films.

In 2014, during the 30th anniversary of Ghostbusters, Hudson reflected on his breakout role as "the fourth Ghostbuster" in a column for Entertainment Weekly. 

The actor received a new script the night before the start of filming and "the character was gone," Hudson wrote. "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." 

When Hudson tried pleading his case to Reitman, he called the director saying, "'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."

By the time of Afterlife, the younger Reitman had reshaped Winston as more of a "complete character," Hudson said in a 2021 interview. Some of the character's original trajectory was restored, with a post-credits scene revealing Winston — now a wealthy businessman and the team's benefactor — purchased the Ghostbusters' New York City firehouse ahead of the NYC-set sequel.

Sony's Ghostbusters 4, directed by Gil Kenan, is currently slated to open in theaters on December 20th.