TCA press tour: Say what? Ozzy Osbourne flogs new variety show
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Here is what it’s like to attend an Ozzy Osbourne press conference:
First, you observe as a question is asked while Ozzy squints and makes a quizzical face. ‘Huh?’ the legendary Black Sabbath frontman will rumble. ‘What’d he say?’
Then you have to wait as wife Sharon leaps in and repeats the question in her husband’s hearing-impaired ears, as if translating an exotic dialect. Then Ozzy gathers himself for some sort of response, and the burden falls on you to try to decipher what in the name of all that’s holy Ozzy is trying to say.
We did our best at the TV press tour in Universal City on Tuesday and came up with the following as relates to Fox’s new variety show ‘Osbournes: Reloaded,’ where Ozzy and Sharon again share the stage with children Jack and Kelly, as they did in their eponymous MTV series.
‘I for a long time couldn’t understand why people were going so wild for it,’ Ozzy remarked (we’re pretty sure) about MTV’s ‘The Osbournes.’ ‘It was just the way we are. ... ‘The Osbournes’ was just a reality thing. Now everybody does it.’
Sharon was more blunt. ‘We were absolutely the best. Everything else that came was just crap.’
The new show, which depends heavily on skits and audience interaction, has forced the family to do a lot more work, they all agreed.
‘The reality show was easy,’ Ozzy said. ‘We thought that everything else in television was easy till we did this show. It’s like a 9-to-5 job.’
But then, Ozzy’s life has changed in so many ways, even if the rock star is not always capable of elaborating on those changes.
One reporter wondered if, back during the height of his heavy-metal days, Ozzy could have imagined doing television shows and cell-phone commercials.
This prompted more squinting and confusion from Ozzy, followed by a lengthy translation from Sharon.
Ozzy looked back at the assembled press, shrugged and replied, in maybe his clearest pronouncement of the afternoon, ‘No.’
-- Scott Collins
