‘They were pissed’: Sharon Osbourne says CBS ‘punished’ her for dissing ‘Oprah with Meghan and Harry’ interview
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: British-American TV personality, Sharon Osbourne, believes that "a CBS executive arranged for her former co-hosts on 'The Talk' to put her through a traumatic on-air ordeal to punish her for being disloyal to the network," Osbourne tells Page Six.
The 69-years-old, further claims that the CBS head of programming, Amy Reisenbach, had punished her, (Osbourne, a CBS employee) for privately and publically supporting friend and journalist Piers Morgan during his whipping of the broadcast, even though the executives at the network were overjoyed with Oprah Winfrey’s blockbuster March 2021 interview with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry which aired on CBS.
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The London-born now claims that Kristin Matthews and the late Heather Gray, 'The Talk' showrunners, told her that "Reisenbach ordered them — even though they didn’t want to — to put her (Osbourne) through the ringer on national TV over her support of Morgan as payback for the betrayal." Although, CBS has earlier mentioned that there was an investigation to find out whether the confrontation between Osbourne and her co-hosts was orchestrated by executives, but found no evidence.
Not long after “Oprah with Meghan and Prince Harry” aired, Piers Morgan received widespread backlash for saying that "he didn’t believe a word that comes out of Markle’s mouth," after the Duchess of Sussex claimed during the sit-down that, "palace insiders had discussed the skin tone of Meghan then unborn child." Though these were the claims there were not acknowledged by Winfrey.
The United Kingdom citizen was frightened after her co-hosts Sheryl Underwood and Elaine Welteroth after the disastrous March 10 episode of 'The Talk,' proposed that "Sharon's defense of Morgan may itself be racist." It was days after the network said that Osbourne’s "combative approach" in the discussion “did not align with [its] values for a respectful workplace.” Shortly after this statement was released by the network, Osbourne resigned and received a payout worth around $10 million.
“They were initially pissed with me because I was saying the [Oprah broadcast] was s–t. Just to people at the studio. I didn’t feel it was genuine,” Osbourne told Page Six on Tuesday. In addition to that, she said, “I had supported Piers [in defense of his] freedom of speech because he’s a journalist.” She told of the network “I think they were pissed off with me, and then when I supported Piers, it was like, ‘Oh god!,'” she continued, “and then they were trying to make an issue, but by doing it very cleverly by accusing me, because I’d supported Piers, I must be a racist because he was racist because he had attacked Meghan.”
Osbourne appeared on “The Talk” for 12 years before quitting over the race scandal, she, later on, said that she believes in order to help promote the show, the executive vice president, Reisenbach may also have been motivated by a desire to create "dramatic, headline-grabbing scenes."