Ozzy Osbourne Says Reality TV Today Is 'Not the Real, Real Reality

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https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/...221000727.html

Sadie Bell
Tue, December 12, 2023 at 2:10 PM PST·3 min read

The heavy metal icon and star of 'The Osbournes' opened up to SPIN about his thoughts on reality TV today

The popularity of the MTV series The Osbournes inspired a boom in reality TV — and Ozzy Osbourne has a lot of thoughts about where the genre is today.

The rock legend, 75, opened up in an interview with SPIN about his thoughts on how much reality television has evolved since his candid series with his wife Sharon and two of their children, daughter Kelly and son Jack, went off the air after four seasons in 2005. According to the Black Sabbath frontman, the big difference is how “scripted” it is today, compared to how their show wasn’t at all.

“I mean, what they call reality TV now is really not reality,” Osbourne told the outlet.

“What they do now is kind of scripted reality. It’s not raw. It’s not the real, real reality,” the musician explained. “With our show, what you saw was what really went on. It wasn’t contrived. It wasn’t scripted.”

The Grammy winner even referred to the success of E!’s Keeping Up with the Kardashians, which premiered in 2007, but pointed out what makes the Kardashian family’s series (now on Hulu as The Kardashians) different. “It’s really interesting because people love the Kardashians,” he noted.

“They took it one stage further. They saw what we did and said, ‘That’s a good idea,’ but they organized themselves,” Osbourne said of some of the series’ seemingly scripted elements.

In contrast, the rocker described the unfiltered elements of his family life that were captured in The Osbournes as what made it so unique and entertaining. “The reality show wasn’t anything different than our regular life, because that’s the way we are anyway,” he said. “We didn’t become the Osbournes that you see just for the show. That’s the way we are, and all they did was take funny bits out of it.”

He added that, once MTV and the producers “started to ask [them] to do things that [they] wouldn’t normally do,” he was ready to end the show. “At that point, I lost interest in it,” he said.

The Osbournes remains one of the most iconic, popular MTV series of all time. During its run, the fly-on-the-wall show won one Primetime Emmy Award for outstanding reality program in 2002 — the second year the category was featured in the award show.

This year, the famous foursome teamed back up on The Osbournes Podcast. (The oldest Osbourne daughter, Aimee, famously declined to appear in the original series and does not appear on the podcast either.)

The rock royalty family first launched their podcast — which sees them reflecting on personal stories and discussing current events — in 2018, and after a five-year hiatus, they officially brought it back in fall 2023.

Although the podcast has been a success, they all agreed on a November episode that there will never be another season of The Osbournes.

“It won’t happen again. Never in a million years,” the heavy metal star said.

Throughout their conversation, Ozzy, as well as Jack, 38, and Kelly, 39, explained that over the years they have realized how heavily it weighed “on everyone’s mental health.”

Despite a reboot not being in their future, a 10-part BBC reality series about Sharon, 71, and Ozzy’s move to the U.K. , Home to Roost, was announced in 2022.

A release date still has yet to be announced, as the rock star has recently undergone a series of operations, most recently in September, after having a fall in 2019.