{"id":31336,"date":"2025-07-23T13:59:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T13:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/31336\/"},"modified":"2025-07-23T13:59:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T13:59:07","slug":"ozzy-osbourne-how-he-became-a-cuddly-family-figure-on-the-osbournes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/31336\/","title":{"rendered":"Ozzy Osbourne: How he became a cuddly family figure on ‘The Osbournes’"},"content":{"rendered":"

LOS ANGELES (AP) \u2014 There was Ozzy<\/a> before \u201cThe Osbournes\u201d and Ozzy after \u201cThe Osbournes.\u201d<\/p>\n

For much of his life, the Black Sabbath founder and legendary heavy metal frontman<\/a> who died at 76 on Tuesday was known to much of the public as a dark purveyor of deeds ranging from decadent to downright Satanic.<\/p>\n

Wild stories followed him. Clergy condemned him. Parents sued him. <\/p>\n

But with the debut of his family reality show on MTV, the world learned what those who\u2019d been paying closer attention already knew: Ozzy Osbourne<\/a> was soft and fuzzy under the darkness.<\/p>\n

During its relatively short run from 2002 to 2005, \u201cThe Osbournes\u201d became a runaway hit and made stars of his wife Sharon and kids Jack and Kelly. But more than that, it made a star of the domesticated version of Ozzy Osbourne, and in the process changed reality TV.<\/p>\n

In 2025, when virtually every variety of celebrity has had a reality show, it\u2019s hard to see what a novelty the series was. MTV sold it as television\u2019s first \u201creality sitcom.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJust the idea of the Black Sabbath founder, who will forever be known for biting the head off a bat during a 1982 concert, as a family man seems strange,\u201d Associated Press Media Writer David Bauder wrote on the eve of \u201cThe Osbournes\u201d premiere. But on the show, Osbourne was \u201csweetly funny \u2014 and under everything a lot like the put-upon dads you\u2019ve been seeing in television sitcoms for generations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Danny Deraney, a publicist who worked with Osbourne and was a lifelong fan, said of the show, \u201cYou saw some guy who was curious. You saw some guy who was being funny. You just saw pretty much the real thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s not the guy that everyone associates with the \u2018Prince of Darkness\u2019 and all this craziness,\u201d Deraney said. \u201cAnd people loved him. He became so affable to so many people because of that show. As metal fans, we knew it. We knew that\u2019s who he was. But now everyone knew.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reality shows at the time, especially the popular competition shows like \u201cSurvivor,\u201d thrived on heightened circumstances. For \u201cThe Osbournes,\u201d no stakes were too low.<\/p>\n

They sat on the couch. They ate dinner. The now-sober Ozzy sipped Diet Cokes, and urged his kids not to indulge in alcohol or drugs when they went out. He struggled to find the History Channel on his satellite TV. They feuded with the neighbors because, of all things, their loud music was driving the Osbournes crazy.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou were seeing this really fascinating, appealing, bizarre tension between the public persona of a celebrity and their mundane experiences at home,\u201d said Kathryn VanArendonk, a critic for Vulture and New York Magazine.<\/p>\n

The sitcom tone was apparent from its first moments.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou turn on this show and you get this like little jazzy cover theme song of the song \u2018Crazy Train,\u2019 and there\u2019s all these bright colors and fancy editing, and we just got to see this like totally 180-degree different side of Ozzy which was just surprising and incredible to watch,\u201d said Nick Caruso, staff editor at TVLine.<\/p>\n

Like family sitcoms, the affection its leads clearly had for each other was essential to its appeal.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor some reason, we kind of just fell in love with them the same way that we grew to love Ozzy and Sharon as like a marital unit,\u201d Caruso said.<\/p>\n

What was maybe strangest about the show was how not-strange it felt. The two Ozzies seemed seamless rather than contradictory.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re realizing that these things are personas and that all personas are these like elaborate complex mosaics of like who a person is,\u201d VanArendonk said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Osbournes\u201d had both an immediate and a long-term affect on the genre.<\/p>\n

Both Caruso and VanArendonk said shows like \u201cNewlyweds: Nick and Jessica,\u201d which followed then-pop stars Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey after they married, was clearly a descendant.<\/p>\n

And countless other shows felt its influence, from \u201cThe Kardashians\u201d to \u201cThe Baldwins\u201d \u2014 the recently debuted reality series on Alec Baldwin, his wife Hilaria and their seven kids.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018The Baldwins\u2019 as a reality show is explicitly modeled on \u2018The Osbournes,\u2019 VanArendonk said. \u201dIt\u2019s like you have these famous people and now you get to see what their home lives are like, what they are like as parents, what they\u2019re eating, what they are taking on with them on vacation, who their pets are, and they are these sort of cuddly, warm, eccentric figures.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES (AP) \u2014 There was Ozzy before \u201cThe Osbournes\u201d and Ozzy after \u201cThe Osbournes.\u201d For much of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31337,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[26284,3135,2356,236,7569,26286,26288,88,793,26289,216,26287,26285,3509,90,795,965],"class_list":["post-31336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-alec-baldwin","tag-ca-state-wire","tag-california","tag-celebrities","tag-celebrity-deaths","tag-danny-deraney","tag-david-bauder","tag-entertainment","tag-general-news","tag-kathryn-vanarendonk","tag-music","tag-nick-caruso","tag-nick-lachey","tag-notable-deaths","tag-ozzy-osbourne","tag-u-s-news","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}