ET spoke with Davis about the late pop star at the premiere of the new Whitney Houston biopic, 'I Wanna Dance With Somebody.'
Clive Davis is looking back on his final hours with Whitney Houston. ET's Rachel Smith spoke with the GRAMMY-winning music executive at the I Wanna Dance With Somebody premiere in New York on Tuesday, where he recalled those last, special moments with the late pop star.
"My last encounter with Whitney was, like, 48 hours before her death," Davis revealed. "She was in great shape, I gotta tell you. She showed me how all the nicotine from her smoking had been removed. Rescheduled a recording for August that was in February. She had just come from her movie that she had been in."
He continued, "And I was playing her songs that Jennifer Hudson had just recorded. We spent the whole afternoon, as we always did together, at my hotel. So, it was shocking, shocking when 48 hours had passed."
Calling those last moments "memorable" and "vivid," Davis, who serves as a producer on the biopic -- the first-ever telling of Houston's life story and career to be officially sanctioned by her family -- also reflected on his first meeting with the singer.
"My first encounter, which is vividly portrayed in the film, is when she auditioned for me -- a small club, Sweetwater. And she sang 'The Greatest Love of All,'" Davis recalled. "That was a song I had commissioned eight years earlier for the movie on the life of Muhammad Ali."
"And I was shocked, this 19-year-old beauty went to the microphone and sang the song as if I had never heard it before," he added. "She found more meaning in that song than Michael Masser or Linda [Creed] when they wrote it. So, I'll never forget it. And that's how we met, right after that audition."
Speaking with ET about the film earlier this month, Davis said he hopes the biopic gives fans an even closer look at who the diva really was.
"The purpose of this film is to show the full Whitney, but it is also to show the great talent," he shared.
See the pair's special relationship when I Wanna Dance With Somebody hits theaters Dec. 23.
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