Kelly Osbourne reflected on her abrupt departure from E!’s Fashion Police while taking aim at former co-host Giuliana Rancic — nine year after the racism scandal involving Rancic and Zendaya.
In February 2015, Rancic, 49, ‘joked’ that a then-18-year-old Zendaya ‘looks like she smells like patchouli oil or weed’ because she wore dreadlocks to the Oscars.
The episode, which featured Osbourne, Rancic, Kathy Griffin and George Kotsiopoulos, sparked major backlash with Zendaya herself publicly slamming Rancic’s ‘ignorant slurs and pure disrespect.’
Rancic insisted that her remarks ‘had NOTHING to do with race’ as she apologized for ‘offending’ Zendaya.
At the time, Osbourne was forced to shutdown rumors that she had also said the Zendaya ‘joke’ off-camera and, just weeks later, announced her exit from the show after five years.
During Tuesday’s episode of The Osbournes Podcast, the influencer called the 2015 race row one of her ‘biggest regrets’ as she discussed the fallout with her family.
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She admitted that Fashion Police was ‘the best job I’ve ever had’ when she was working under the late Joan Rivers, who hosted with Osbourne and other panelists from the show’s 2010 premiere until her death in September 2014 at age 81.
The comedian’s daughter Melissa Rivers, 56, served as executive producer until the show’s 2017 cancellation.
Kelly told mom Sharon Osbourne, 71, that it was ‘the closest thing that I had to working with my mom.’
But at Sharon’s mention of her time with Rancic, Kelly fired back: ‘We don’t need to give her any f*****g anything.’
Kelly’s brother Jack Osbourne, 38, then rehashed the Giuliana/Zendaya scandal for listeners.
‘One of the co-hosts of the show made a really kind of a f*****g racist comment about her hair, and nothing happened to the woman that that made the comment,’ Jack explained, in reference in Rancic.
‘And then Kelly kind of took the stand of, like, “That’s f****d up. I don’t wanna work with someone like that.”‘
‘And then it somehow got turned around that Kelly said the comment, but Kelly didn’t say the comment,’ Jack concluded.
‘It turned into this whole thing, and it made me take a long hard look at where I was, and it made me realize that I didn’t wanna be there without Joan [Rivers],’ Kelly explained.
She continued: ‘It’s one of my biggest regrets in all of it, to be honest with you, was how Melissa got hurt in all of it because she had just lost her mom and then the show.’
Months after condemning Giuliana’s Zendaya comments, Kelly found herself in a racism scandal of her own during an appearance on The View in August 2015.
Kelly was on the talk-show during Donald Trump’s campaign for president and on the heels of his ‘Mexico isn’t sending their best’ speech, as she declared ‘If you kick every Latino out of this country, then who is going to be cleaning your toilets?’
She quickly received shocked gasps from the audience and co-hosts Rosie Perez and Whoopi Goldberg, followed by backlash, accusations of racism, and death threats.
Kelly reflected on the incident in a 2024 interview with Rolling Stone, telling the outlet that she considers it ‘the worst thing I’ve ever done’.
‘That to me, is by far makes it the worst thing I’ve ever done… And to be labeled as something you’re not is really difficult. But it happened. There’s nothing I can do,’ she said.
When asked about who she saw when she looked at that video now, she replied: ‘A self-righteous little c**t.’
She went on: ‘I hate it. I hate it so much because I look at it and I’m like, “You think you know everything and you know nothing. Nobody wants to hear [your] opinion on this.”‘
The mom-of-one also revealed that she can now see a bit of the humor in the ‘cringe’ moment, thanks to a new TikTok trend where users recreate the clip by sharing their own problematic stereotypes.
‘If you kick out evert white woman out of this country, who’s gonna rescue all the pit pulls?’ one user on the app inquired.
‘If you kick every lesbian out of this country, who’s going to rent your trucks, U-Haul?’ another TikToker participating in the trend asked.
Kelly said of the trend: ‘It’s the most cringe moment of my entire life. But to see people be creative with it does put a smile on my face. It turns something so ugly into something funny.’
Though she did add that seeing the original clip has not gotten any easier: ‘I’d be lying if I said I didn’t hate myself a little bit more each time I see it.’
The daughter of rocker Ozzy Osbourne and TV personality Sharon Osbourne then clarified what she meant by the words she said eight years ago.
‘This whole country is built on immigrants, and if you stop people from coming into this country who do the jobs that make this country exist and thrive and flourish, who’s going to do all the jobs that you don’t want to do yourself?’ she said, adding, ‘It came out so wrong.’