Sharon Osborne. Love. And the legalities of featuring child actors on what is one of the more promising — and raunchy concepts — to shore up Fox’s evening programming slate in recent days (not to say I am a variety show fan, but in Sharon’s words, “We are not going to Sonny and Cher’ it.”)
Sharon, an Os-Bourne Star!
But don’t let me get ahead of myself. I’m tackling all three, in this exact order. What can I say, I am feeling ambitious!
So, let me start out saying I have for a long, long time been a fan of the Osbourne clan. Rather, not to put too fine a point on it, its heart and soul, the matriarch Mrs. Sharon Osbourne. A mother of three, a dog lover, a best-selling writer, a reality TV star, a cancer survivor — and a manager and tireless helpmeet to her husband, Black Sabbath frontman Ozzy Osbourne. Sharon wears many shoes — and makes every single pair look glamorous and comfy.
During our recent talk, Sharon explained that the concept for the new television venture for the clan, a rather offbeat variety undertaking, Osbournes Reloaded, was, and continues being, a labor of love — and much heated back and forth between the parents and their two opinionated “young adult” children. Considering what a far-ranging, no holds barred, show this is turning out to be, I can believe it.
During the negotiations with FOX, the family, Sharon says, was ready to tackle TV again — but not at the expense of inviting cameras into their homes again. Hence, this little concept: featuring audience interaction, rowdy comedy and hilarious stunts, it seeks to shock as well as entertain. Take the series opener, for one, in which the family challenged an audience member to kiss a beautiful female stranger blindfolded, which turned from “hot and heavy” to “old and wrinkled” when Sharon switched out the participants at the last minute.
Meanwhile, an unsuspecting boyfriend is prodded into a life-altering decision when his girlfriend demands he marry her that evening in front of the audience; Kelly and Ozzy find themselves “Osbourne in the USA,” when they go to work at a fast-food drive-thru; and Sharon and Ozzy reminisce about their first date in the “Littlest Osbournes,” where pint-size, potty-mouthed versions of Sharon and Ozzy visit the movie theater…in all their four-letter glory.
Speaking of which, that was a subject I had been most interested in bringing up to Mrs. Osbourne.
I’m a mom myself and I know that your intention is to use child actors who are going to be emulating yourself and your husband.
Yes?
So, would they really be allowed to use the language that you guys are famous for, and was there a problem getting the network to agree?
No, because the children used are professional actors. They were there with their parents. We had to get special permission to use them anyway. We have to have a license to use children, and everything that they were saying, it hadn’t been swearing. They were using the word “frigging,” okay?
Fair enough. So, the network actually didn’t have a problem when you suggested it, or did you have to make any changes to the original format to fit it into a more family-friendly mold?
No. You’ve got to remember this is a light-hearted comedy show, and so, we use children and then, in their scripts, it was no swearing at all. It was “sticky” and “frigging,” so they’re not using the words. And you’ve got to remember that they’re child actors. It’s like what do you do when you use children in horror movies, right? You can watch any horror movie today and there will most likely be little children used in it.
____________________
Reasoned and cool, exactly as I always imagine the mind, responsible for nurturing the wild Osbourne clan into one of the wealthiest entertainment royals in the UK, to handle a question.
They Ain't Nobody's Bitches!
Watching Reloaded, given a plum spot with a lead-in from American Idol, I could tell, for all its shenenigans, it is being run by the same iron fist in a designer kid glove. The unruly premiere — just as unlike a Sonny and Cher fare as has been promised — came at me with a bang, and yet, brimming with that sense of connection and warmth I’ve come to expect from Sharon and Ozzy. And something tells me, as the show settles into its stride, it will consistently fail to disappoint.
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