It has been 21 years to the day since the final episode of The Osbournes aired on MTV in the UK. The show ended its run in the United States on March 21, 2005. It would be another couple of weeks before the finale aired in the family’s homeland.
The Osbournes debuted on MTV on March 5, 2002. Following the lives of heavy metal godfather Ozzy Osbourne and his family, the show was a one-of-a-kind reality TV hit. It would run for 52 episodes across four seasons.
The Osbournes was a hit with reality TV fans and catapulted the family into a whole new stratosphere of fame. Ozzy, though, was not a big fan of being on TV and felt the experience was ultimately not positive for him, his wife Sharon, and two of their kids, Jack and Kelly.
“I have this f***ing thing about seeing myself on TV. I never watched one episode of The Osbournes,” Ozzy once told the Cleveland Scene, as transcribed by Brave Words. “It freaks me out. I think, ‘Is that me? Do I really look like a f***ing idiot like that?’”
Ozzy also revealed that some viewers believed the show was scripted. “With The Osbournes, people would ask me who writes the script,” he recalled. “I would go, ‘What?’ They would go, ‘Who writes the script to the show?’ I would go, ‘God. That’s just the way we lived.’”
Being transparent about how the show impacted his family, Ozzy then added, “The kids ended up on drugs. I ended up on drugs and alcohol. My wife got cancer. You can’t get more real than that.”
Ozzy was very happy to see ‘The Osbournes’ come to an end
In a separate conversation with NME, Ozzy explained how much he loathed filming The Osbournes. “The level of success that TV show got us was too much,” he told the outlet in 2020. “I had to bow out. I said to Sharon: ‘I don’t like the way it makes me feel, and I can’t stand f***ing cameramen in my house.’”
“I’m not upset that I did it, but I wouldn’t do it again,” Ozzy added. “People were going: ‘Aren’t you worried about losing your fans?’ I said: ‘I’m not worried about losing my fans – I’m worried about losing my f***ing mind.’”
Finally, Ozzy explained what led him to want to quit, and pinpointed a specific moment he knew he was done. “God’s honest truth: one day I’m lying on the couch and about six or seven Japanese people come in,” he remembered. “I thought they were friends of Kelly’s. I said: ‘Upstairs, second door on the right.’ I didn’t even want to f***ing get off the couch.”
“Turned out they’d just walked in,” Ozzy quipped. “Got off a tour bus and walked in the f***ing house. It was nuts!”
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