Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon have ‘Bull Durham’ reunion: ‘Catching up with an old friend’

It was a home run.

Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon had a reunion at the 81st annual Venice Film Festival, 36 years after the duo co-starred in the baseball romance “Bull Durham.” 

Costner, 69, documented the occasion with an Instagram post. 

“There’s nothing like catching up with an old friend,” Costner wrote on his Instagram Thursday, sharing a picture of himself with Sarandon, 77, smiling together.

The former “Yellowstone” star added, “Great to see you [Susan Sarandon] we’ve come a long way since our ‘Bull Durham’ days.”

Sarandon attended Venice as an honoree of Better World Fund. 

Costner attended for the premiere of his Western epic “Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2.” Costner starred in and directed the four-part film, which has an uncertain box office future, as the first part bombed, got scathing reviews, and the second part got scrapped from the box office schedule in the US, even as it’s premiering at Venice.

The 1988 movie “Bull Durham,” which earned Sarandon a Golden Globe nomination for Best Musical or Comedy, stars Costner as “Crash” Davis, a veteran catcher on a minor league baseball team who is teaching rookie pitcher Ebby Calvin “Nuke” LaLoosh (Tim Robbins) about the game. Annie Savoy (Sarandon) is a baseball groupie involved with Nuke, who finds herself drawn to Crash. 

In real life, Sarandon met and got together with Robbins while filming the movie. The former couple broke up in 2009, but were together for over two decades and share two sons. 

In the movie, Crash and Annie famously have a sex scene in the kitchen, and Costner said in a 2019 interview that he piled objects on the island for dramatic impact. 

“The physical ballet is where she just finally gets him,” Costner told EW. 

“I’m wiping things off without ever taking my eyes off [her]; I’m clearing the table going and looking at her. What I like doing is taking a script, and then finding the physical. So, I loaded up that island.” 

The Oscar winner added, “When you really want somebody, [nothing] makes a difference. ‘This crashed? Oh, the milk spilled? Who gives a s—?’ And that leads to blowing on her toenails.”

Costner told the outlet that he feels “a real affinity” to Crash as a character. 

“That was a highlight situation to play Crash — this American rascal, this ne’er-do-well in heroic defeat.”

In an interview with the BUILD Series, Sarandon described the role as a “really great part that she “wasn’t overqualified for.”

“And of course, I had two kids as a result of that movie. So … what can I say?”

As for when her kids watched the steamy film? “I looked over at my older son…And then my younger son, I said, ‘Well what did you think Miles?’ He said, ‘I thought it was great, mom. But scarring.’”

“Bull Durham” writer/director revealed in a 2022 interview with the Hollywood Reporter that Sarandon almost wasn’t in the movie. 

“For some reason, the studio said Susan Sarandon was not on the list, which made no sense,” he said at the time, describing how studio’s have “lists” of bankable stars. 

“And her agent kept calling. I couldn’t tell her she wasn’t on the list because I’d be giving away a studio secret. Then I’d be in trouble. So I’m lying. I’m trying to make my first movie and I’m lying out of the gate,” Ron Shelton said. 

When the movie was in preproduction, Sarandon flew from Italy where she was living at the time to the Burbank, Calif., studios.

“She shows up dressed to kill in a red-and-white tube dress. She looked like a million bucks and she just got off a plane, a 10-hour flight. She comes in, and I have Kevin there. She’s pushing me and Kevin around verbally and physically. She’s off-book, meaning she knows her lines. She’s Annie. She was Annie,” he went on.

“We sat there and poured a drink, I remember Kevin and the producers: ‘What are we going to do? She’s not on the list. She’s so great.’”

But, she managed to convince the studio to take a chance on her.

“I found out later she went right from the audition to the studio…She worked her way up and down the hallways until she found all the executives that matter. … She pretended she had business there. … [Then she] flew back to Italy, and by the time she landed, she had the part.”