Kelly Osbourne is addressing her past controversial comments. In a new interview with Rolling Stone, the 39-year-old TV personality speaks for the first time about her headline-making appearance on The View in 2015.
Nearly a decade ago, Donald Trump told a crowd that “Mexico isn’t sending their best” during a presidential campaign speech. Shortly thereafter, Osbourne appeared on the morning show and said, “If you kick every Latino out of this country, then who is going to be cleaning your toilets, Donald Trump?”
As the crowd and the show’s co-hosts gasped, Osbourne said, “Oh that’s not… In the sense that… You know what I mean? I didn’t mean it like that. Come on!”
Amid the immediate backlash, Osbourne admitted to using a “poor choice of words,” but insisted, “I will not apologize for being racist as I am NOT.”
Now, Osbourne tells Rolling Stone that she was “a self-righteous little c**t” during the 2015 interview.
“I hate it,” she says of the clip. “I hate it so much because I look at it and I’m like, ‘You think you know everything and you know nothing. Nobody wants to hear [your] opinion on this.'”
TikTok recently reupped The View clip, making it go viral by pairing it with stereotypes about businesses and groups of people.
“It’s the most cringe moment of my entire life, but to see people be creative with it does put a smile on my face. It turns something so ugly into something funny,” Osbourne says, adding that the clip getting attention again “goes to show that people never forget.”
“Even though I’m the butt of the joke, I’m still laughing. And some of them are very smart,” she says of the TikTok videos. “But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t hate myself a little bit more each time I see it.”
Osbourne acknowledges that her comment “hurt a lot of people, and that to me, is by far makes it the worst thing I’ve ever done.”
“I realized that I’m not great on live TV and that words are so powerful,” she says. “And to be labeled as something you’re not is really difficult. But it happened. There’s nothing I can do.”
What she meant by her comment, Osbourne says, is that “this whole country is built on immigrants, and if you stop people from coming into this country who do the jobs that make this country exist and thrive and flourish, who’s going to do all the jobs that you don’t want to do yourself? It came out so wrong.”
Though she doesn’t make excuses for her comment, Osbourne provides insight into what was going on in her life at the time of her appearance on The View.
“It was a really, really hard time in my life. I had just been in rehab and what I needed was something else. It wasn’t for drugs, it was more my anxiety disorder, my depression disorder, childhood trauma, all of that kind of stuff,” she says. “During that time, my dad [Ozzy Osbourne] had just cheated on my mother [Sharon Osbourne].”
“I was drinking to numb the pain of everything. I was a trash can when it came to drugs, whatever I could get my hands on. And I was a really broken, scared person,” Osbourne adds. “And then after that event, it kind of kick-started me taking a long, hard look at myself and the things that I don’t like and the things that I’d like to change and the things that I’d like to keep.”
The newfound attention the TikTok videos have brought gave Osbourne the chance to address her View appearance for the first time ever.
“It was something that was so painful. And so life-changing, chaotic, and crazy in every way. I mean, I received death threats. I used to have this freedom where people liked my crazy opinions and they liked the shock factor of it. And I fed into it a lot because I didn’t understand it,” she says. “I’ve learned when to shut up and to stop talking. I’m definitely not the person I was before that incident.”
Now, she hopes “people realize I’m taking responsibility and trying to mend the hurt.”
“But I do deserve a second chance,” she says. “But at the same time, I can totally see why people won’t and don’t think that.”
As for what she’s learned in the years since the incident, Osbourne says, “[Immigrants are] coming here because they want the opportunity to build something for themselves. And every single American person had that opportunity, so why can’t they? This country was built on immigrants. Unless you’re a Native American, you immigrated into this country somewhere in your family.”
“Nobody wants to hear from a white person about race. No one. They don’t. I learned that the hard way. Like I said, it is time for us to accept the change that’s happening and embrace it and support it rather than being scared and feeling like someone’s taking something away from you,” Osbourne says. “Everybody is entitled to their opinion, but like I said, it’s time to sit down and shut up. If you’re not supporting it, shut up… White people need to take a long hard look, check their privilege, and be a little bit more open-minded. A lot more open-minded.”
She plans to teach her and Sid Wilson’s 1-year-old son, Sidney, as much one day, saying, “I’m going to have to play that video for my son at one point and explain it to him. That is probably the cherry on the cake of how painful all of this is. I want him to understand what I was trying to say and how powerful words are.”
