‘I felt totally betrayed,’ were the words Sharon Osbourne uttered when discussing her controversial exit from The Talk. During an interview with DailyMailTV on September 13th, Osbourne threw shots at her former employers and co-hosts when recounting the alleged racial incident that ultimately prompted her to quit the talk show back in March. Osbourne’s co-hosts at the time were Amanda Kloots, Elaine Welteroth, and Sheryl Underwood.
The initial event occurred after the 68-year-old got into a heated discussion with Underwood over Osbourne’s support for her friend Piers Morgan after he left Good Morning Britain for his remarks about Meghan Markle. Morgan claimed he didn’t believe Markle’s admission of suicidal thoughts and experiencing racism and bullying within the royal family during her sit-down interview with O, The Oprah Magazine.
“Osbourne told the publication “It was a freedom of speech matter. It was pure freedom of speech. 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.”
The America’s Got Talent judge went on to allege that the impromptu moment with Underwood was planned by an undisclosed CBS executive to cause controversy. She said while accusing her co-hosts of being involved in painting her as a racist, “They all knew the question and they all knew what was going down. I felt totally betrayed.” What made matters worse, Osbourne instructed Underwood on air, who was visibly upset during the initial dispute, to stop crying over a topic she related to.
‘We had a disagreement and I told her (Underwood) she shouldn’t be crying, it should be me that should be crying and that didn’t go down well. Then in the commercial break, she wouldn’t talk to me. I was begging her to talk to me and she wouldn’t, and basically I said, go f–k yourself.”
Osbourne and Underwood, who had worked together side by side for ten years, haven’t spoken to each other following that infamous episode, and the star’s departure from the show.
The mother of three wrapped up by expressing how upset she was for the 20 minutes she was left on air, unprepared. Osbourne said while demanding an apology, “To leave me for 20 minutes on live TV… on live TV… unprepared, not produced, not knowing what’s going on. Wait, where’s their apology to me? They could have cut at any time and gone to a commercial break, and why didn’t they cut?”
She added, “They didn’t cut because they liked the controversy and they liked that everybody would be talking about this because they needed something for the show that was going into the toilet. So they thought, well, she’s got the biggest following. Let’s go for her… I felt totally betrayed, not protected by CBS. I felt used.”
Since Osbourne’s exit from The Talk, she allegedly made up $10 million for her payout according to Page Six.