Giuliana Rancic on Zendaya Controversy: People Were Threatening to Kill My Family!

That’s social media for ya!

Giuliana Rancic is opening up to People about her controversial Zendaya remarks following this year’s Academy Awards.

For those of you who don’t recall, Giuliana stated that Zendaya’s dreadlocks more than likely smelled of “patchouli oil and weed” during an episode of Fashion Police.

Immediately following her controversial remarks, social media was set ablaze, with many users hurling accusations of racism at Giuliana. Things spun so much out of control that Giuliana was forced to make an on-air apology, and Kelly Osbourne and Kathy Griffin later quit the show.

According to Yahoo! Celebrity, in a new interview with People, Rancic stated, “I started very quickly getting death threats. People were sending me pictures of the barrel of a gun saying, ‘I’m going to kill your family.’ It was awful.”

Eek!

She continued:

“I made [the joke] as a reference to the hippie culture. It was a bohemian-chic reference, not about race, nor would it ever be. It was horrifying to have my name in a headline with words I have never been associated with in my life.”

Giuliana also somewhat blamed editors for her controversial remarks and rebuffed Kelly’s claims that she openly voiced opposition to the joke.

“On set, I made peace signs and I said boho twice. It was edited. And my words were taken out of context. If I thought this joke could be interpreted another way, I never would have done it. I felt horrible. There were about 50 sets of eyeballs on set that day and not one person thought that it had the undertones that it ended up having once it aired because they heard it in context.”

Thoughts?