Ernie Hudson Opens Up about His Complicated Relationship with Ghostbusters

Ernie Hudson has been a working actor for decades, but his most famous role is no doubt Winston Zeddemore from Ghostbusters. While Hudson is nice to enough to make cameos in the franchise, he’s recently revealed that he had been mistreated by the studio when the first film came out.

Talking to The Howard Stern Show,, Hudson revealed that he was set aside by the studio as one of the main ghostbusters, with his role greatly reduced and him not even appearing on the official poster with Harold Ramis, Dan Aykroyd, and Bill Murray.

Despite thinking that Ghostbusters was going to be his big break, Hudson was said to have had trouble finding work after the film, what with the studio pushing him aside. Despite this, Hudson says that hes finally made peace with the movie. He explains:

“I’m so thankful to be part of the franchise, but it wasn’t an easy road—in fact, Ghostbusters, I would say, was probably the most difficult movie I ever did just from the psychological perspective… it probably took me 10, 20 years anyway to finally get sort of past that and just embrace the movie and enjoy the movie… Ghostbusters was really hard to make peace with.”

For now, Hudson is set to return for the sequel to Ghostbusters: Afterlife where he will be taking a mentor role for a new generation of ghostbusters. Though Winston isn’t the scientist of the group, he’s now confirmed to be the backer of the entire operation, being the most successful ghostbuster after the whole business closed down.

Here’s the synopsis for the sequel:

After the events in Oklahoma, the Ghostbusters team returns to where it all started; New York City! The Spengler family story continues with a new group of Ghostbusters led by Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson) and Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd).

The next Ghostbusters movie is set to come out on Dec. 20.