Sharon Osbourne Opens Up About ‘The Talk’ Firing: ‘It Was Like I Was Dead’

Sharon Osbourne famously parted ways from “The Talk” last year after a heated discussion about race with Sheryl Underwood that resulted in a CBS internal investigation and, ultimately, her exit from the show.

Osbourne is now heading back to her native England to join longtime friend Piers Morgan on a new U.K. talk show — which is, interestingly enough, also called “The Talk”.

In a new interview with The Sunday Times, Osbourne opens up about the experience.

“They said to me, ‘You are on permanent suspension. We don’t think that you’re repentant enough. And we will decide whether you ever come back,'” she recalled. “And I said, ‘Well, who’s going to make that decision?’ And they said, ‘We can’t tell you.’”

Not only was Osbourne dumped from the TV job she’d held for a decade, she was also greeted with death threats. “They were saying they were going to come in the night, cut my throat, cut Ozzy’s throat, cut my dogs’ throats,” she added, forcing her to hire 24-7 security.

For Osbourne, it was clear that the television career she’d been cultivating for 20 years was over — in North America, at least.

“My phone as far as my TV career here [was concerned] was nonexistent, not one call. Noth-Ing,” she recalled. “In England and Australia it never changed. Here it was like I was dead.”

Having lived through it, Osbourne looked back how much her life changed “when people turn on you en masse… I said, ‘I ain’t going out, I ain’t doing anything.’ I just couldn’t stop crying because all I was thinking about was all the things that I’ve gone through in my life, and now they’re calling me a racist, this is insanity.”

Osbourne also spoke of a chilling effect from excessive political correctness, referencing a recent dinner she’d had with a female friend when they whispered their conversation in case what they were saying was controversial and wound up being overheard.

“Everybody’s scared of saying something wrong that somebody would take and sell,” she explained. “It’s no way to bloody live. I don’t want it. I don’t need it.”

That, she said, was a big part of why she and husband Ozzy are returning to Britain after decades living in Los Angeles. “It’s just our time to go home,” she said. “I don’t want to be judged.”

Not surprisingly, Osbourne has harsh words for the Hollywood she feels has shunned her.

“In the entertainment industry everyone’s a hypocrite, everybody’s a jobsworth. Everybody overnight became politically correct and ‘walk on eggshells’,” she added, using Will Smith’s Oscars slap as an example.

“When he wins [the best actor award], everybody stands up. It’s, like, you’re such hypocrites. You’re going to go home and say how disgraceful his behaviour was, but you stand up and give him a standing ovation,” she said.

Asked whether she thinks Smith can eventually mount a comeback, she replied, “Of course. He’s probably making his next movie now. You know, it’s like I’ve always said, in this industry, if people could make a buck off you… If Hitler were alive today, they would give him a TV show.”