Ernie Hudson Says Ghostbusters Is the 'Most Difficult Movie' He's Ever Done: 'Hard to Make Peace'

Ernie Hudson is revealing details about some difficulties he had while making Ghostbusters.

The 77-year-old Champions actor appeared on The Howard Stern Wrap Up Show this week, where he opened up about feeling "pushed aside" in favor of the "really successful" Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis — whom he said were "all welcoming and inclusive" themselves.

"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," recalled Hudson. "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 very selectively I was pushed aside."

While the actor also praised late director Ivan Reitman, he went on to recount not seeing himself on the posters for the 1984 comedy, something he said still persisted three decades later.

"I went to the 30th-anniversary release of the movie, and I was invited to a theater in Chicago to introduce the movie, and I get there and all the posters are three guys," Hudson said of Murray, 72, Aykroyd, 70, and the late Ramis, who died in 2014 at age 69.

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Columbia Pictures/Alamy From left: Ghostbusters' Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Sigourney Weaver, Bill Murray and Ernie Hudson in 1984

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"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," he added.

Hudson revealed that he is currently negotiating another return to the franchise that is set to begin shooting next month, after he previously appeared in 2021's Ghostbusters: Afterlife, reprising his character Winston Zeddemore.

"There's a place that I'm not an add-on. And so if I'm gonna do it, it has to make sense," he said.

For Hudson, he "was always told it's almost impossible to succeed" when he started out in the entertainment business, "but if you get in a major movie from a major studio and it comes out and it opens No. 1, it'll change your career."

"Well, Ghostbusters didn't do any of that for me," he admitted. "I was working pretty nonstop. I did Ghostbusters, and it was two and a half years before I got another movie."

Slaven Vlasic/Getty Ernie Hudson

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The actor allowed that the film was "important" and "big," and that he's "so thankful to be a part of the franchise."

"But it wasn't an easy road," Hudson said. "Ghostbusters, I would say, it was probably the most difficult movie I ever did just from the psychological perspective."

Citing script changes and more, he continued, "All those things … it definitely felt deliberate. And I'm still not trying to take it personal."

"If you're African American in this country, anything bad happens to you, you can always blame it on, 'Oh, because I'm Black.' … You don't wanna go there," Hudson said. "That's the last thing you wanna do … I got nothing bad to say about anybody, but it was hard, and it was hard for a long time."

And it took him "10 years to finally get past that and just embrace the movie and enjoy the movie," he added. "Ghostbusters was really hard to make peace with."