Sharon Osbourne goes on the offensive, accuses ‘The Talk’ producers of orchestrating her controversy
Sharon Osbourne is firing back at CBS in her first interview since leaving “The Talk” amid a racism controversy.
Osbourne faced allegations of racism at the time that ultimately led to her jumping ship with the long-running talk show after years on the air. Speaking in a preview for the upcoming Season 5 premiere of “DailyMailTV,” she went on the offensive, accusing CBS of orchestrating the uncomfortable moment that ultimately led to her departure from the show.
She had a heated exchange with co-host Sheryl Underwood in which she expressed her support for Piers Morgan after he left “Good Morning Britain” over differing opinions about Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey. Now, Osbourne is claiming that producers orchestrated the situation.
“They all knew the question and they all knew what was going down. I felt totally betrayed,” she said.
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Sharon Osbourne blames CBS for the controversy that led to her decision to leave ‘The Talk’
(CBS)
Osbourne alleges that she didn’t do anything wrong and that she was merely portrayed as the bad guy in the situation.
“It was a freedom of speech matter. It was pure freedom of speech,” Sharon told DailyMailTV. “A journalist friend of mine who wrote something that people didn’t like and then a few crazies out there, some thugs go – ‘you must be racist, that’s why you’re saying it’ – about my friend Piers. It’s like, come on.”
Osbourne says that the optics of telling her co-host not to cry were bad. When cameras stopped rolling during a commercial break, she alleges that she begged Underwood to talk to her but she refused, prompting her to say “go f— yourself.”
“I would say that to any one of my friends,” she explained. ‘When you say it to a friend, it’s different than saying it to somebody, a stranger. If you can’t get real with somebody who you’ve worked alongside for 10 years, then then you don’t have a friendship, and that’s the way I look at it,” she said.
She also discussed being stuck in front of a live audience after the controversial moment, accusing producers of refusing to cut to commercial in order to drum up publicity for the show which she describes as “going in the toilet.”
Representatives for CBS did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment.
Now, months after the controversy that led to a hiatus for the show as well as her eventual departure, Osbourne claims she had to undergo some unconventional therapy as well as hire 24-hour security in the wake of death threats from viewers stemming from the controversy.
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“I definitely went through a difficult patch at the beginning. I found it embarrassing. The humiliation that people would think that I might be a racist,’ she revealed.
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She also noted that former co-host Sara Gilbert suggested she undergo ketamine treatments, which she did.
“I went through three months of therapy,” she concluded. “I had ketamine treatment and I got it all out. All the tears and everything that I felt, you know. All of that, it’s gone.”
