Sharon Osbourne says she believes a CBS executive arranged for her former co-hosts on “The Talk” to put her through a traumatic on-air ordeal to punish her for being disloyal to the network.
via Page Six:
The Brit says that execs at the network were overjoyed with Oprah Winfrey’s blockbuster March 2021 interview with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry which aired on CBS — and she claimed that head of programming Amy Reisenbach was furious that Osbourne, a CBS employee, had both dissed the special privately and also publicly supported friend and journalist Piers Morgan during his shellacking of the broadcast.
Now Osbourne claims that “The Talk” show runners Kristin Matthews and the late Heather Gray told her that Reisenbach ordered them — even though they didn’t want to — to put Osbourne through the ringer on national TV over her support of Morgan as payback for the betrayal.
CBS has previously said that an investigation found no evidence that the confrontation between Osbourne and her co-hosts was orchestrated by execs.
Morgan had received widespread backlash in the days after “Oprah with Meghan and Harry” aired for saying that he didn’t “believe a word that comes out of” Markle’s mouth, after she claimed during the sit-down that, among other things, palace insiders had discussed the skin tone of her then unborn child — claims that went unchallenged by Winfrey.
On the train wreck March 10 episode of the “Talk,” Osbourne was horrified after co-hosts Sheryl Underwood and Elaine Welteroth suggested that her defense of Morgan may itself be racist. The network later said that Osbourne’s combative approach in the discussion “did not align with [its] values for a respectful workplace.” She resigned shortly afterwards and, we reported at the time, received a payout worth around $10 million.
“They were initially pissed with me because I was saying the [Oprah broadcast] was s–t. Just to people at the studio. I didn’t feel it was genuine,” Osbourne told Page Six on Tuesday. Plus, she said, “I had supported Piers [in defense of his] freedom of speech because he’s a journalist.”
“I think they were pissed off with me, and then when I supported Piers, it was like, ‘Oh god!,’” she told us of the network, “and then they were trying to make an issue, but by doing it very cleverly by accusing me, because I’d supported Piers, I must be a racist because he was racist because he had attacked Meghan.”
Osbourne also says that she believes Reisenbach may also have been motivated by a desire to create dramatic, headline grabbing scenes to help promote the show.
A CBS insider withered, “This is a story only one person cares about.”
Osbourne’s addresses her exit from “The Talk” in a four-part documentary, “Sharon Osbourne: To Hell and Back,” which debuts on Fox Nation September 26.
The documentary also explores her upbringing in the music business, her early success in the industry, her marriage to Ozzy Osbourne and rise to fame. She told us she hopes, in addition to telling her side of the CBS story, that the series will show she “wasn’t just some woman hanging around a show who married Ozzy. I’ve worked in [show business] since I was 15.”
We doubt there was some grand conspiracy to make Sharon pay — she sided with a racist (Piers) and had to face consequences for her actions. That’s it.
