Ghostbusters: Afterlife will more fully flesh out Winston Zeddemore's character, according to star Ernie Hudson. Hudson starred in the first two Ghostbusters films in the 1980s as Winston, the everyman Ghostbuster without a background in paranormal science who the Ghostbusters bring on as hired help and who is mostly stunned by the world of ghosts and goblins. Compared to other iterations of the Ghostbusters franchise, like the popular 80s cartoon, the films portrayed Winston as something of a minor player, not nearly as important as his fellow Ghostbusters Peter Venkman (Bill Murray), Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd), and Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis).
When Bill Murray declined to return for a third film, Sony decided to reboot the franchise with 2016's Ghostbusters: Answer The Call, in which the surviving cast also cameoed. That film's all-female core cast became a lightning rod for controversy, and despite mostly positive reviews it ultimately underperformed at the box office. It was eventually revealed that director Jason Reitman - son of the original film's director Ivan Reitman - would mount another sequel of the original films, with the original cast in tow.
In a new interview on the Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum podcast, Ernie Hudson enthusiastically confirmed his involvement and that Reitman has finally made Winston a fully realized character. This is welcome news, as Winston was severely underwritten in the original films, an unfortunate reality for those films' only major character of color, and for an actor of Hudson's abilities. Hudson confirmed his part in the original film was severely curtailed from the original script, something he's always regretted and felt lessened the character. Hudson said, "Yep! Yep, thanks to Jason Reitman. Winston is definitely a complete character."
There's still plenty we don't know about Ghostbusters: Afterlife. The film will follow a family consisting of a single mother (Carrie Coon) and her two children (Mckenna Grace and Finn Wolfhard) who move to a farm in Oklahoma, where the children discover their late grandfather has an important connection to the events of the original films. It seems a good bet their grandfather was Egon Spengler, played by the late Harold Ramis, and that the film will examine the legacy left behind by the brainiest Ghostbuster.
Jason Reitman understandably considers Ghostbusters: Afterlife a project close to his heart and even managed to get the elusive Bill Murray to sign on, likely to honor his late friend Ramis. And while it seems likely Winston's role here will still be relatively small, it's good to know that Ernie Hudson feels like the character is finally getting his due - even if it's a few decades late.