Almost a year after Sharon Osbourne was suspended and eventually split with U.S. talk show ‘The Talk’, she sits down with U.K.’s Sunday Times and discusses how cancel culture has impacted her.
Last month it was revealed that Sharon would be returning to television in a new show with co-host Piers Morgan on a new U.K. series called ‘The Talk’ as well.
The whole thing started back in March of last year when shortly after Oprah Winfrey had interviewed Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Piers had been on Good Morning Britain the following day and stormed out of an interview when asked about statements he had made about Markle that were considered racist in nature.
During a segment on ‘The Talk’ where they were discussing the incident, Sharon revealed that while she did not agree with what Piers said, she asked her co-host to explain what the racial undertones of Morgan’s comments were.
A heated exchange took then took place, sending the show into a state of hiatus as execs tried to figure out how to proceed.
After the show had aired, previous The Talk hosts and staff claimed that Osbourne had made racial comments on set in the past, causing even more backlash towards the host.
Last fall, Sharon said that she felt she had been set up and betrayed by her colleagues on the show. “So you say something wrong — you’re not threatening somebody — but you say something wrong, you’re out. You are out,” she said.
“They said to me, ‘You are on permanent suspension. We don’t think that you’re repentant enough. And we will decide whether you ever come back,’” Osbourne recalled of her dismissal. “And I said, ‘Well, who’s going to make that decision?’ And they said, ‘We can’t tell you.’”
After Sharon was off the show, she claims she was blacklisted and received death threats. “They were saying they were going to come in the night, cut my throat, cut Ozzy [Osbourne’s] throat, cut my dogs’ throats,” Osbourne explained. “I said, ‘I ain’t going out, I ain’t doing anything.’ I just couldn’t stop crying because all I was thinking about was all the things that I’ve gone through in my life, and now they’re calling me a racist. This is insanity.”
Osbourne says that in America, her career was pretty well over it seemed and she resorted to ketamine therapy in an effort to treat the anxiety and depression. That being said, she did make note that in England and Australia it was as if nothing had changed.
Discussing cancel culture, Osbourne called out the hypocrisy that exists with those that tend to complain the most. She touched on the recent Will Smith-Chris Rock Academy awards slap incident, saying: “When [Smith] wins [the Best Actor award], everybody stands up. It’s, like, you’re such hypocrites. You’re going to go home and say how disgraceful his behavior was, but you stand up and give him a standing ovation. You know, it’s like I’ve always said, in this industry, if people could make a buck off you… If Hitler were alive today, they would give him a TV show.”
Sharon Osbourne’s new show with Piers Morgan will air on the U.K.’s new network Talk TV.