Before Kevin Costner, there was David Roberts.
The former police officer, who went on to become Whitney Houston’s bodyguard, has written a memoir, “Protecting Whitney.” It details how Welsh-born Roberts looked after the singer before their friendship came to an abrupt end.
Roberts was hired in 1988 for the superstar’s UK portion of the “Moment of Truth” world tour. He told Fox News Digital that Houston had one famous fan who made his adoration well known – Robert De Niro.
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“Mr. De Niro was smitten with Ms. Houston,” he recalled. “He kept sending her flowers. I don’t mean a bunch of flowers . . . it was a room full of flowers. And that was for a few months.”
According to Roberts’ book, De Niro was “not an individual used to taking no for an answer.” However, the “Raging Bull” star was no match for Houston’s mother, singer Cissy Houston.
“She called him up,” Roberts claimed. “She told him to stop it – stop making a fool out of himself. And when Cissy Houston says stop it, you stop it. That was the end of that.”
At the time, according to Roberts’ book, Houston was dating Eddie Murphy.
A spokesperson for De Niro, now 81, didn’t immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment about Roberts’ claims.
Houston herself once recalled how the Oscar winner attempted to win her over. During an appearance on “The Byron Allen Show” in 1990, she described how De Niro followed her “all the way to London.”
“He sent me flowers and everything, and he’d been on my case,” she said. “He’d been sweating me for a little while. . . . He was like, ‘Is Whitney here? How long ago did she leave?’’ . . . He called me the night at Carnegie Hall. He did. He called backstage and wanted to talk to me that night. . . . He called me that night.”
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“He was a little bit shy, so he didn’t want to come to the show because he shies away from the public eye,” she gushed. “But . . . he sent me some flowers and stuff, and he wanted to get to know me better. . . . [But] he’s going with Toukie Smith.”
At the time, Houston claimed that De Niro wanted to “do a movie with her.”
“It’s a really good script, and I’m looking at it,” she said. “I think he’s a wonderful actor. One of the best.”
There was another Bobby who did make Houston swoon – Bobby Brown. In his book, Roberts admitted that he had hoped Houston’s romance with the bad boy artist would end as quickly as it started.
“I wasn’t alone in my view,” Roberts told Fox News Digital. “Bobby came from one element, Whitney came from another… you would never think that they could ever come together successfully.”
“He could not come up to her standards. . . . So she went down to his standards to make him feel comfortable in her environment,” he claimed. “But when you looked at them, you couldn’t help but think, ‘These two people don’t belong together, do they?’”
Houston met the ex-boy band member at the 1989 Soul Train Music Awards. They went on to marry in 1992. The union was tumultuous, and Brown was widely blamed by the press for introducing Houston to drugs. He denied the allegations in his 1997 memoir.
Brown later insisted that Houston was not the squeaky-clean pop princess she was made out to be.
Roberts claimed in his book that Houston was trying to keep up with Brown’s bad habits.
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“In the seven and a half plus years that I was with Whitney, I never, ever saw her [with] any form of drugs at all, unless you consider a Heineken and a cigarette as a narcotic,” said Roberts. “She was never affected by [them] in my presence. However, when Mr. Brown came into the scenario, the use of alcohol, in particular, became more profound, and that was self-evident.”
“We were on tour in Europe and every two days, the management team would drop two crates of Heineken and a bottle of brandy, or whatever it was, in the room, and two days later she’d be too ill to come out,” Roberts claimed. “And that was the touring scenario, and that was . . . bringing her down, in everybody’s view. It was not complimenting her. It was not helping her.”
Brown and Houston welcomed a daughter, Bobbi Kristina Brown, in 1993. However, the marriage was plagued with problems as the couple battled their own demons.
During the marriage, Brown was arrested on drug and alcohol charges, while Houston entered rehab on two occasions, Biography.com reported. According to the outlet, Brown was arrested in 2003 for allegedly striking Houston. She supported him in court, and he wasn’t convicted. The singer denied ever hitting her.
The pair separated in 2006, and their divorce was finalized in 2007. But Houston continued to be plagued by addiction. Her famous voice deteriorated through the years due to cocaine use, The New York Times reported.
Brown quit hard drugs while he was incarcerated in 2000, but he continued to struggle with alcohol addiction throughout the years. He last spent time at a treatment facility for alcohol abuse in 2020. In 2022, Brown, now 55, told Fox News Digital that he is sober.
Roberts believed that those within Houston’s circle, even after her divorce, turned a blind eye to her drug use.
“I was angry,” he said. “The lady was hurting. She needed help. And those people who were in a significantly better position than I was to help her denied it to her. They denied it, in my opinion, because they were selfish and self-centered.
“This was a young lady whose voice box paid their mortgages. No way were they going to stop that… It was obvious that drugs were impacting her. . . . She was losing control of normalcy. She was falling under the pressure of what everybody wanted . . . what the entertainment industry wanted.”
“It was a lot of pressure for a young lady to bear,” Roberts shared. “She was a mother and wife who seldom saw her husband . . . it became unbearable for her. . . . How she broke was inevitable.”
Roberts stopped serving as Houston’s bodyguard in 1995.
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“I got a call,” said Roberts. “I was told, ‘Houston is not considering any more international travel . . . . If she changes her mind, we’ll let you know.’ I think that was probably the greatest, ‘Thank you, and you’re fired.’”
Houston passed away in 2012 at age 48. She was found submerged in the bathtub of her hotel room a day before the Grammys. She died from drowning and the effects of atherosclerotic heart disease and cocaine use.
Roberts said he was heartbroken to hear of Houston’s death, but wasn’t surprised.
“We were all to blame – it’s just a question of degrees,” said Roberts. “Those who could have done something immediately, those who could have done something in support, and those who could have done something later. But we did nothing. We just let it go.
“It’s the culture – once you leave the environment, it’s like you never existed. You were never there. . . . But I just remember seeing her emaciated, trying to carry on and perform on stage. You can’t help but think, ‘How could she look like that and still be alive?’ It was painful.”
Roberts said that over the years, he felt guilty for not speaking out when he suspected Houston was spiraling. He now hopes his story will serve as a cautionary tale.
“I remain angry,” he said. “That’s why I’m speaking out now. I consider the entire scenario a failure of mine . . . I was paid to protect her. There was an anger in me, but writing this book was cathartic. . . . Still, she should be alive now, and we should be listening to her songs.”
