Four years after her unceremonious exit from The Talk, Sharon Osbourne‘s late husband is calling out CBS from beyond the grave.
In Ozzy Osbourne‘s posthumous memoir Last Rites, now available after the Black Sabbath rocker died at age 76 in July, he claimed “they pushed Sharon out” from the show following an on-air argument with her co-hosts over her friend Piers Morgan.
“The person she is convinced set her up — and I ain’t gonna name names, ‘cos the last thing I want to do is stir all that shit up again — knew what they were doing, I think,” wrote Ozzy, according to Entertainment Weekly. “And Sharon, when she feels like she’s being cornered, she”s gonna come out fighting.”
After Sharon had it out with Sheryl Underwood over Morgan’s comments about Meghan Markle, which were perceived as racist, CBS launched an investigation into the exchange and put the show on hiatus before Sharon ultimately departed her seat weeks later.
“They pushed Sharon out,” wrote Ozzy. “Just a few weeks earlier, when Sharon had been in hospital with Covid, the same people had gone on Instagram to say ‘Mrs. O, we love you.’ What a bunch of phoneys.”
Sheryl Underwood, Carrie Ann Inaba, Sharon Osbourne, Sara Gilbert and Eve on ‘The Talk’ on Aug. 2, 2019
Cliff Lipson/CBS
Ozzy added that “the worst part” was people thinking Sharon was racist because of her association with Morgan. “I can tell you without any doubt, my wife is not a racist. It’s against everything she’s ever stood for. Anyone who’s spent more than five seconds with her knows that,” he wrote.
“The people she worked with on that show knew that,” added Ozzy. “To be stuck with that label, it was just f***ing wrong. Because you can never get a gig anywhere on TV once that’s what people think of you. It’s game over. They knew that when they took her down.”
Although Sharon “was devastated for a long while,” Ozzy said he admired how she “just lets it go and never talks about it again.”
“She’s an incredible woman, my wife,” added Ozzy. “As for The Talk, poetic justice was served in the end. It got f***ing cancelled.”
The Talk announced last November it was ending its 15-season run, airing its finale after 2,993 episodes the next month. Developed by Sara Gilbert, the daytime talk show debuted in 2010 with her and Osbourne among the original panel of co-hosts.