I cannot believe it will be 10 years in September since we lost the late, great Joan Rivers, may she rest in punch lines. My mother and I were so happy for her when Fashion Police took off on E! in 2010 and we never missed an episode. To this day there are comments she made when covering Will & Kate’s wedding that make me howl. And I enjoyed cohost George Kotsiopoulos; he wasn’t a big name at the time (at least not to me!) but he was funny, mature, and clearly knew his fashion. And then there were Giuliana Rancic and Kelly Osbourne. Yeah. Giuliana’s inclusion always felt like it came with the deal of E! producing. I don’t know why Kelly was there.
The show never bounced back after Joan’s passing, and of course the cataclysmic event that I think was the start of its ultimate undoing was Oscars 2015. Giuliana made a terrible comment on Zendaya’s dreadlocks (Z was 18 at the time), Kelly claimed she warned ahead of time that the “joke” was a bad idea, and shortly thereafter Kelly left the show in righteous fury. Well, Kelly wants us to know that nine years later… she still f–king hates Giuliana Rancic. Maybe “hate” is too strong a word. As Kelly said of Giuliana this week on her family’s podcast, “as far as I’m concerned, she doesn’t exist.”
Kelly Osbourne dismissed her former “Fashion Police” co-host Giuliana Rancic as irrelevant in Tuesday’s episode of her family’s “The Osbournes Podcast.”
“We don’t need to give her any f–king anything,” Osbourne, 39, said of Rancic, 49, after her mom, Sharon Osbourne, mentioned the entertainment reporter.
Kelly’s brother, Jack Osbourne, and their father, Ozzy Osbourne, recalled the “Shut Up” singer being wrongly accused of making “a f–king racist comment” about Zendaya’s hair on the E! talk show in 2015 — when in reality Rancic was the one who had said the “Dune” star smelled “like patchouli oil and weed.”
Jack said he has not “seen anything from [Rancic] in a very long time,” to which Kelly replied that she “wouldn’t know because as far as I’m concerned, she doesn’t exist.”
Zendaya, 27, condemned Rancic’s comment at the time, sharing on Instagram that there “is already a harsh criticism of African-American hair in society without the help of ignorant people who choose to judge others based on the curl of their hair.”
Rancic faced an onslaught of backlash for the remark and issued a public apology to the “Challengers” star, admitting her words were “outrageously offensive.”
Amid the scandal, confusion swirled and Kelly was dragged into it despite not being the one to make the dig at Zendaya.
Kelly ended up leaving “Fashion Police” shortly after.
E! canceled the series in 2017.
Kelly and Rancic had co-hosted the fashion commentary show alongside late comedian Joan Rivers and magazine editor George Kotsiopoulos since its premiere in 2010.
Jack reflected on the ordeal, saying he had read a news article “where Zendaya was like, ‘Yeah, f–k Giuliana Rancic.’”
“Good for her,” Kelly cheered.
First of all, show your receipts, Jack Osbourne. “Yeah, f–k Giuliana Rancic” doesn’t sound at all like the professional woman Zendaya is, and I’m not finding any trace of it online. Don’t put words in Z’s mouth! As for the rest of it… gah why are they still talking about this?! And why are Jack and Ozzy saying Kelly got blamed? I was there (watching), and I don’t recall ever being confused about who made the comment (Giuliana). What else is there to say? Yes, it’s rich coming from Kelly, who went on to make a heinously racist remark on TV herself. And accepted an award from the Trevor Project in December 2016 where she told the LGBTQ+ audience to give Trump a chance. And got banned from playgrounds for getting into fights with other kids and parents. And was sued by her father’s mistress for doxxing her phone number in a tweet. So in conclusion, Giuliana is just joining a long list of people Kelly is either mad at or not talking to at all. Giuliana, meanwhile, is shilling a home line on HSN.
Photos credit: Carlos Diaz/INFevents.com, Getty and via Instagram
Kelly Osborne just hates. It starts with herself and encompasses anything in her orbit as far as I can tell.
Exactly this. She is one in a long line of women who make their living from cutting other people down, especially other women. Rancic deserved harsh criticism for what she said, but Kelly’s claim to fame is being born and being bitter.
She learned it from her mother.
How insightful. She’s so much like her mother in that they are always one unhinged comment away from tearing someone down.
They are like jackals sniffing for opportunity.
Rancic’s comment was ridiculously unfunny yet the purple people eater has perpetrated plenty of bad behavior.
I agree, she seems like a deeply miserable person who has issues with everyone around her, just like her mother. Both of them should be thanking their lucky stars they have “careers” via Ozzy.
Kelly Osborne is just as racist as her mother. So much performative outrage from her is insane.
Yeah, whom doesn’t she hate? That would be a shorter list.
She and her Mum are cut from the same cloth— spewing hate all the time.
Kelly Osborne hates Giulianna Rancic because she’s tall and slender and more easily fits societal standards of beauty while Kelly has spent thousands of dollars to alter her appearance and she still isn’t satisfied with what she sees in the mirror.
She’ll never admit that that’s part of the reason and probably will never see that Giulianna is as much a victim of a f*cked up system as Kelly is. Kelly’s identity is based on being the hater outsider who wishes she were an insider. As is her mother’s. That’s why Sharon is walking around looking like Jocelyn Wildenstein.
Haven’t liked her since her comment about Latinos! Her fake lips look painful
and atrocious!
Some people can weigh in on Giuliana. Kelly is not one of them. She needs to sit down and shut up. She and her mother have both whined about “cancel culture” and made off color remarks of their own, and yet, here she is wanting someone else canceled.
The thing I remember about Giuliana is just that she was so thin and always talking about it. And she talked about how her doctor begged her to put on 5 lbs so she could conceive (she had a tough time getting pregnant). And how she did, like this was a landmark event the public should know about.
You gained 5 effing lbs. That is not news. She always struck me as so deeply disordered in her relationship to her body/weight. To be fair, she was working at a time when the media focus on women was insane, but my God. 5 lbs. I’ll never forget THAT.
She was pretty thin though. I also remember her and her husband had a reality show about their personal life on E! so people were interested in her at some point.
Kelly probably hates rancic for different reasons and not for that racist joke on Z. Kelly is a racist, she proved it 1000% when she said we needed the latinos coming if not, “who would be cleaning our toilets?” Fcking racist btch
Up to this very minute I believed that Kelly Osbourne was a nice person. After reading this post I am changing my mind. You do not treat people like that. A Trump supporter too! She is on my sh*t list now.
Anyone who thinks she’s a nice person knows literally nothing about her. She is a nasty piece of work–always has been. Glad you know now…
Kelly is still talking about it because she is an uneducated narcissist that has no interests other than herself and nothing intelligent to say about anything else anyway.
Sorry, but Joan Rivers made a living from misogyny, reducing women’s value to whether they fit into the conventional standards of beauty. I’ll always remember that while Elizabeth Taylor was trying to help people with AIDS, Rivers was insulting her for her weight.
This. And made racist “jokes”, too. How about we not deify people just because they’re dead?
This, I found her to be quite mean and dismissive.
I agree, quite frankly I couldn’t stand Joan Rivers. She made a really asinine, off colour joke about Gianni Versace shortly after his death, and was so fatphobic it warranted professional help.
Agreed but she was a comedian with a whole schtick. Yes it was offensive but you knew it was her pathetic attempt to get a laugh out of people.
To me that’s different than a nepo baby with no discernable talent letting the mask slip.
I appreciated that she was a trailblazer for women in comedy, but I too never really cared for her material. It was often cruel, and there’s no reason for that.
My father (pilot) had Rivers on his flight once. She was being such a horrible witch to the flight attendants before takeoff that he had to come out and threaten to kick her off of the flight.
Yeah, I agree with this. She was very much “of an era” and I think her humor was on the way out even before we lost her. I can’t imagine her going over very well these days. But yes thank you, trailblazer, etc. I recognize her contribution without enjoying her brand of humor.
Rivers came up when “Take my wife, please” was considered high comedic art. Her style didn’t age well.
Team No-one.
Same. Everyone in this article, except Zendaya, is a terrible person. Even Joan was a mean spirited misogynist who was bitter that she wasn’t considered pretty by Hollywood standards and as a result she absolutely shredded other women.
100% agree….all sad, angry wastes of time.
I’ll bring the orange slices for the team meeting.
This is correct. I think I watched the show once and it was so mean I never did again. Gofugyourself was and is 1000% better if you like fashion.
100% agree. Neither of them is a gem.
Harpo, who that woman in the pictures? Holy surgery, Batman!
I love my mother very much but I honestly can’t imagine spending tens of thousands of dollars on plastic surgery just to look exactly like her. It’s f*cking bizarre, man.
Kelly’s a hypocrite.
Exactly!
Team No One
They can ALL see themselves out
(which Kelly seems like she’s doing, piece by piece)
(This should have been a reply to MsMontClair)
Kelly is a hater, she came from a family of haters, ALL THEY DO IS HATE, HATE, HATE 👀👀
Rancic made a big mistake. She is not naturally very funny. I always wondered if writers wrote that racist comment ab Z’s hair for her or she ad libbed or embellished. Either way she should have know better. Regardless she apologized and retired from E! and sells clothes on HSN and PRs her family chain italian restuarant RPM. I do get impression but I could be wrong that she is remorseful and reflective of being racist. She had very serious breast cancer and Health issues so I get impression she has changed perspective on life. Kelly sounds like she never made it in Hollywood and wants to just blame someone 100% , like she needs to go to therapy for anger. Jack sounds like he’s just um yeah let me say some things to fill up air time and have a few seconds of relevance. B/c really he also has fallen off of planet earth….
Right, What she said was inexcusable but she issued an apology and then went away like everyone wanted her to. I give her credit for that, at least.
Giuliana’s comment was inexcusable, but I’ve not heard anything similar from her before or since. The same can definitely not be said about Kelly or her family.
Everyone mentioned in the article is absolute trash, except Zendaya, of course. I wish they could all go and live on some trash island together and leave the rest of us in peace. Well, Joan Rivers is already dead, but she was the trash that paved the way for the rest of them to go forth and be awful.
If Guiliana had any insight, she would have known those words were very offensive as they were coming out of her mouth. Zendaya handled it with more class and maturity than I would have ever possessed at that age. I wish she asked Guliana to repeat herself slowly and just ice stared through Guliana’s soul at her without answering, It would have left Guliana stuttering.
Kelly is spoiled brat who’s Mother is Sharon, so ignorance seems to be their schtick. Hold a mirror up to their own ridiculous antics and they should turn to ash like a vampire in sunlight, but for some reason they don’t . Awful.
We’re still talking about this because Zendaya just had a big moment at the Met Gala and Kelly wants in on some of the attention. That’s it.
KO should close her mouth & keep her fat tongue from flopping out such BS… ratchet inside and out…. Honey no amount of plastic surgery, colored hair dye and cake make up can hide the ugly..
Unpopular opinion but I didn’t feel Giuliana’s comment was racist at all although I have to accept it is seen that way. I suppose it deserved to be a nail in the coffin of the show since it revealed that the fashion critiques were actually being made by a room full of joke writers…
The giveaway to me was the reference to patchouli oil. As far as I was concerned Guiliana was invoking a stereotype usually associated with white people, what we in the UK knew in the 90s as a ‘crusty’. They are hippy adjacent, wear tie dye, smoke weed, were early adopters of nose and brow piercings and so on.
It was actually kind of egalitarian and colour blind to project that onto Zendaya, honestly, the mistake was *not* seeing her race and not being careful about the other implications. Had Guiliana said the same thing about a white girl with dreads, like Xtina in her literal ‘Dirty’ era, who would have complained?
And the stereotype, being associated as it is with a white subculture, is also sort of benign? It’s drugs as harmless recreation, not a corrosive lifestyle, it’s not saying promiscuity, it’s not saying criminality, its’s not saying stupidity and honestly the kind of stereotyping I think we should actually be concerned about. At the time it sounded like people heard the word “smells” and sort of ignored the “weed” and “patchoulli oil” part. So not bad smells per se, just, *particular* smells..?
They were actually letting Zendaya be that rarest of things – a carefree black girl, a black Vanessa Hudgens, or like a Williow or Zoe Kravitz? I hope people do get that if I said Willow looked like she smelled of weed and patchouli oil that would have nothing to do with her race?
And also I think the joke writer was correct on the fashion aspect. I don’t think the style went well with Zendaya’s dress especially given that it wasn’t her actual hair but extensions she put in just for the look?
But the comment would not have taken down the show if the show wasn’t on life support already. I think Kelly clearly disliked Guiliana already, as I think others have said, especially because she used to sit there guffawing her head off at Joan’s spiteful barbs. It was definitely wierd to me to see the show buried on the ground that had been excessively cruel without Joan, I found it almost unbearably toxic towards the end of her run and was watching for the fashion, not the comments. I was happy to watch with Melissa and because the jokes came from writers as we all know now anyway, who can really say it was objectively less funny?
I think this kerfuffle/horrible racist incident and the show in general have overall been a boon to Zendaya because I had never heard of her until I saw her there. And her stylist revealed they had a strategy to appear on ‘Who Wore it Best’ segments (by intentionally wearing the same outfits as more famous celebs) and raise her profile that way. And it makes sense because even now I don’t think she’s a particularly good actress or singer. I am really happy for her though, and she seems like a nice person, and I like that she photogenic and in quite an accessible and afrocentric way, but not heartstoppingly beautiful. Another Rihanna – fair play to her
To me Kelly looked better back then then she does now. I guess it must one of those Family Guy Woman Think Jolie Foster is Attractive and Men Don’t type situations because she seems to think that being thin is the same is being attractive. And many would agree, to be fair.
Look at her, still making her living from whinging, after telling us rich people have nothing to complain about, and from name dropping people she hates… Can’t tell if the Osbournes doing a “I used to be somebody” podcast means they are desperate for money or attention. Hoping the former…
The problem wasn’t so much the patchouli part but the fact that she saw dreadlocks and immediately thought “dirty and smelly”. There is a deep and sordid history in how white people have characterized black folks’ hairstyles, particularly braids and dreads both of which have deep historical and cultural significance to POC. If she had made that same comment about a white person with dreads, it would still be pretty awful because it’s referring to the hairstyle and nothing more. Zendaya looked beautiful and was clearly fresh, clean, polished but because she had dreads Rancic (or her shitty writers) wet straight to “dirty”. That’s why it was and is racist.
And MANY POC wear extensions and braid, dreads etc to professional or formal events so seeing dreads with a suit or an elegant gown really shouldn’t be seen as “not matching”. Dreads and braids are elegant and regal IMO.
I also have to add that one of several issues that many WOC in this forum have discussed (and far more eloquently than I am) is that this is exactly why white folks wearing dreads is cultural appropriation. Revered, traditionally black hairstyles are not a costume to put on and off. WOC have suffered immense amount of judgment, discrimination, and outright violence for their hair and white folks want to just dabble with that shit for a fun lewk. Like, NO. Stop that shit.
People should be able to wear their hair in locks without conjecture that they’re on drugs.
I liked Joan Rivers in her early days, but I found Joan and her comedy in her last decades offensive and mean-spirited. She was “friends” with Charles and Camilla and she trashed Diana constantly. She was very much a bitch on steroids in her last years.
The Osbournes original show and Jack’s World Tour show (along with a few others) were entertaining. Sadly we only hear about Kelly and Sharon when they are fighting or insulting people. Zendaya and Giuliana. Z’s dreadlocks were extensions added for ‘her’ look that night. Dreadlocks carry a cultural, spiritual and social meaning. On this particular day, the fake dreadlocks were an accessory to an outfit which may have just been a choice that looked great and it turned into a bigger cultural message. Giuliana dismissed their importance by generalizing all people with dreadlocks as hippies who wear patchouli and smoke weed. Bad joke and racist, regardless of her intentions. But the above makes it seem like E signed off on it & possibly wrote it and Kelly is bragging she knew better. Kelly probably would have said that line if the script had her name in front of it.
Kelly Osbourne was acid-tongued re Harry on the I’ve Had It podcast. I used to think she had a sweet face, and assumed she had a sweet disposition. Obviously, I was wrong. If you watch her on the podcast profanely bashing Harry, she looks ugly; her mouth looks ugly; she looks anything but happy and serene.
Darkwing Duck and Kitten, I hear both of you. When this incident happened, I initially did not think what Giuliana said was racist – but that was because I grew up in a very white part of the Northwest where the only people I knew with dreadlocks were white “hippies” … who usually smoked weed and smelled like patchouli (I also knew nothing about cultural appropriation).. The joke was dumb because Zendaya looked gorgeous and nothing like the Deadheads I knew (i.e., people who followed the Grateful Dead around the country) but I assumed Giuliana had only seen dreads in the context that I had seen them. I also had a soft spot for her because of her struggles with fertility and BC, but man … in retrospect, that comment was REALLY offensive. And really racist. Impact matters more than intent, obviously, but I honestly even question her intent looking back on it.