Ernie Hudson

The thing about being the least-famous Ghostbuster going in is that it leaves you open for a truly bonkers career. Not that Ernie Hudson’s career was so straightforward before that role—a role apparently originally intended for Eddie Murphy—but it didn’t get more normal afterward. And if he hasn’t hit the Comedy Legend status of costars Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd, or even Rick Moranis, well, I don’t know anything specifically bad about him, unlike Bill Murray or Dan Aykroyd. (Rick Moranis, so far as I know, is a mensch.) It’s also true that he’s been able to show a broader range simply because he was acting in whatever came his way.

It’s also worth noting that he’s not without talent himself. He was a playwright for Concept East, the oldest black theatre company in the US, before even starting college, much less graduating. While in college, he established his own theatre company. He performed on the stage through his twenties and started two graduate programs. He left the first to appear in a production of The Great White Hope and the second to appear in the film Leadbelly. From there, he settled in Hollywood, apparently planning to make a go of his onscreen career.

His pre-Ghostbusters career is frankly not all that unusual, for an actor in Hollywood in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Fantasy Island. The Incredible Hulk. His episode of Little House on the Prairie is a little unusual for a black actor, but he also has a Bosom Buddies under his belt. I am frankly fascinated by the movie he was in called Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone, mostly because of its cast. Molly Ringwald? Michael Ironside? Uncredited appearances by Colin Mochrie and Harold Ramis? Note that I’m not saying it sounds good. Just fascinating.

Post-Ghostbusters, his career got weirder. He was on the pilot of Cop Rock before being replaced by Vondie Curtis-Hall, and I’ve never known why. He’s prominent in The Crow. 1994 also brought Airheads; 1995 would bring Congo and The Basketball Diaries. He’s in two Beverly Hills Chihuahua movies and both Miss Congeniality movies, not to mention a God’s Not Dead. His voicework has ranged from assorted superhero shows to Clifford’s Really Big Movie and various video games. He even did two episodes of Twin Peaks: The Return.

His family life is also fascinating. He never knew his father, and his mother died of tuberculosis when he was a baby. He was raised by his maternal grandmother. He has been married twice, having two sons from each marriage. And one of his sons, born Earnest Lee Hudson, Jr., found African family through a DNA test. To make it well established that this is a thing it’s possible to do, he traveled to Ghana to seek them out. His distant cousins of the Ewe people performed traditional divination and discovered he is the reincarnation of a many-times, I believe, great-grandfather who was a chief. He is now Togbui Kpongo Afenya I of the Ewe. So, you know, he’s got that going for him.