It was a loopy prepare.
On Tuesday, Ozzy Osbourne died at age 76, 5 years after he introduced his Parkinson’s illness analysis in January 2020.
He handed away, “surrounded by love,” his household stated in a press release to The Submit.
The rock star was the Prince of Darkness, the daddy of heavy steel, however maybe the strangest Ozzy milestone is starring on one of many first actuality TV reveals – with the seminal sequence, “The Osbournes,” which aired on MTV from 2002 to 2005.
Sue Kolinsky, who labored as a producer on “The Osbournes,” solely instructed The Submit, “We realized early on that anything Ozzy did was going to be funny. Like making a milkshake – we were gonna have [that be] three minutes of an episode. He was so funny, and he had no idea how funny he was.”
She added, “No one ever said to Ozzy, ‘hey, can you say that again?’ Whatever you shot, that’s what we had to use. And that’s what made the show so brilliant, because it really was real.”
Kolinsky continued, “Everything he did was kind of like a crazy rocker version of ‘Father Knows Best.’ And he was kind.”
Jason Mittell, professor of Movie and Media Tradition at Middlebury School, solely instructed The Submit, “It’s pretty amazing that it started in 2002, which was really the very beginning of the reality TV boom. ‘Survivor’ and ‘Big Brother’ had only been on for a couple of years at that point.”
He defined that when “The Osbournes” premiered, “There was a real sense at the time that reality TV was a passing fad.”
With “The Osbournes” diving into the household’s life and following them as characters, “that really had not been done before on TV,” he shared.
It was swiftly adopted by Paris Hilton’s “The Simple Life” in 2003, and the reign of the Kardashian household, which first launched on TV when “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” premiered in 2007, simply two years after “The Osbournes” ended.
The present adopted the outrageous antics and residential lifetime of the Black Sabbath frontman, his spouse Sharon, 72, his daughter Kelly, 40, and son Jack, 39. The couple’s different daughter, Aimee, 41, selected to not take part within the sequence.
“He and the family were the ones who really put reality TV on the map. I believe the reason why the show was so successful was because they really were a loving family,” Kolinsky stated.
“And we got such creative freedom because it was new. I don’t know what other family in the rock world would have been able to pull this off.”
She added, “The family was just so gracious with giving us access to everything about their lives. They let us film them when they woke up in the morning. They let us film them in every situation that they were going through. They never said, ‘No, we don’t want to see ourselves in that light.’”
Kolinsky recalled an incident when Ozzy and Sharon have been leaving on a visit, however “The Osbournes” wasn’t allowed to movie on a airplane. So, the inventive group filmed the pair sitting in “a black SUV that kind of looked like a private plane,” she recalled.
“And we found shots of a pilot’s hand punching in instruments. We used that and cut to his assistant. So, we made his assistant the pilot, and tilted the shot, to make it look like the car was taking off.”
She recalled exhibiting Ozzy the footage earlier than it aired, “and he was on the floor, hysterical. Like ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe you made the car a plane and used Tony as the pilot!”
On the time, “The Osbournes” was the highest-rated present in MTV’s historical past, drawing over 5 million viewers per episode.
Throughout a 2021 look on the “Armchair Expert” podcast, Kelly stated that when “The Osbournes” started, “No one had ever done what we did before. So as we were doing it, we didn’t know either. We didn’t know what they were going to use, and what they weren’t, because they filmed everything.”
She recalled that when the present premiered, “The next day, everything changed. It was like Beatlemania, except for ‘The Osbournes.’”
In 2002, the Kardashians and “Real Housewives” weren’t even a twinkle in TV producers’ eyes.
Actuality TV existed – that was the 12 months “The Bachelor” premiered, too – however it was principally competitors reveals like “American Idol” or ones about area of interest industries, comparable to “Monster Garage.”
At this time, fame-hungry individuals let viewers into their lives on a regular basis – on reveals like “Vanderpump Rules” or “Below Deck.”
A slew of celebs even have their very own actuality reveals, comparable to Sylvester Stallone within the 2023 Paramount+ present “The Family Stallone,” Denise Richards (her first of a number of reveals, “Denise Richards: It’s Complicated,” premiered in 2008).
Alec and Hilaria Baldwin at the moment have TLC’s “The Baldwins.”
David and Victoria Beckham additionally noticed viral success with their 2023 Netflix sequence, “Beckham.”
However, the Osbournes “set the template,” Mittell defined.
About Ozzy’s unlikely path from heavy steel rocker to actuality TV star, he stated, “I think a lot of [the show’s appeal] was just the combination of the sense of, here’s this guy who is known for these massive rock shows and this flamboyant onscreen personality and the piercing voice. And here he is, just watching history documentaries. Or, wandering around the house, and living the normal family life.”
He added, “So I think that was a big part of [the show’s success], was the idea that it was such an unusual contrast to what we would think the life of an iconic rocker would be.”
In a 2019 SiriusXM interview, reporter Jess Cagle instructed Sharon, “Without you, you realize, there would be no Kardashians.”
The household matriarch replied, “It was really Ozzy. He was the one that was in the public eye. He was the celebrity, and he’s the one that took all the risks….I think it paid off for Ozzy because people saw how funny he is. He’s just hysterical, and a teddy bear.”
“The Osbournes” confirmed the steel star as a foul-mouthed loving father who was usually amusingly bewildered by mundane day by day life.
As an example, within the sequence premiere episode, Ozzy struggled to determine tips on how to use a TV distant.
“I’m a very simple man. You’ve got to have computer knowledge to turn the f–king TV on and off,” he stated. “I pressed this one button…I’m going: ‘What is this? Where am I, man?’”
“He just didn’t really care that much about doing anything embarrassing,” Mittell instructed The Submit.
Cameron Glendenning, who turned a digital camera operator on “The Osbournes,” instructed The Submit that Ozzy would hand around in the storage with the present’s crew at evening when he was bored, and he’d prank followers who would flip up at his gate by turning the sprinklers on them.
“He’d come in there and he would be like, ‘Oh yeah, let’s get him! Let’s go get him,’” he recalled.
To Glendenning, it was simply one other day within the workplace.
“He’s a f–king rock legend and we were just a bunch of kids in his garage shooting a TV show about his life and he would like break that fourth wall, walking in the garage, and we would all, you be like, ‘Oh s–t! The boss is here,’ but you know he was just so funny,” he added.
The “War Pigs” singer had blended emotions about his personal present, which is why it lasted solely 4 seasons, regardless of its outsized affect on TV historical past.
“I don’t know how the Kardashians have done it for so long — it sent us crazy at the end,” Ozzy recounted in January 2023.
“I am not sorry I did it, but after three or four years I said, ‘Do you know what, we’re going to lose somebody because it is getting too crazy. There is rock ‘n’ roll fame, which is pretty intense, but that Osbourne level was just unbelievable.”
Kolinsky remembers the present as being “part of something so special, and so unique, and so iconic.”
She recalled an incident the place she felt the present’s affect. Shortly after it premiered, the producers went out to the Home of Blues. There have been no seats out there, however when it got here out that they labored on “The Osbournes,” they have been swiftly escorted to the venue’s VIP part.
“That was the effect that show had on people. Everybody wanted to know you. [Ozzy] united different generations. The fact that he was a heavy metal rocker didn’t dismay an older crowd from being hooked on the show. And, to so many people who didn’t know him from his music, he was just this funny TV dad.”
