Ozzy Osbourne was part of the first wave of reality television alongside his family on MTV’s The Osbournes, which ran from 2002 to 2005, and says his show was the real deal, raw and unfiltered, unlike reality shows today.
It’s been more than 20 years since reality television took over the airwaves and Ozzy Osbourne, one of the OGs of the format, says it’s become less and less real over the years.
Speaking with Spin magazine, the legendary rocker and reality pioneer — The Osbournes aired for four seasons from 2002 to 2005 on MTV — said, “What they do now is kind of scripted reality. It’s not raw, it’s not the real, real reality.”
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Conversely, he said that with his family’s show, “what you saw was what really went on. It wasn’t contrived. It wasn’t scripted.”
Many fans have complained online about shows creating situations for their casts where even if the conversations are unscripted, the scenarios and settings were coordinated by producers in an attempt to elicit the most drama — think all those Real Housewives parties and Kardashians vacations.
Ozzy starred alongside his wife Sharon and two of their children, jack and Kelly, on their reality show, which really did seem to just follow them around as they did whatever it was that they had to do that day. It blew up because of how wild and unorthodox they are as a family.
“The reality show wasn’t anything different than our regular life, because that’s the way we are anyway,” Ozzy told the magazine. “We didn’t become the Osbournes that you see just for the show. That’s the way we are, and all they did was take funny bits out of it.”
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In fact, he said that when the family started to face some pressure to perhaps step into contrived situations, that’s when they decided it might be time to pull the plug.
Ozzy explained that they always checked in each season to see if they wanted to continue as a family. “After the third year, the [production crew and MTV] started to ask us to do things that we wouldn’t normally do,” he said. “At that point, I lost interest in it.”
The Black Sabbath frontman gives credits to the Kardashians for perfecting the format that proved successful on their show. Premiering in 2007, Keeping Up with the Kardashians was among that first generation of reality shows, helping to define the genre.
“They took it one stage further,” he said of the still-popular family. “They saw what we did and said, ‘That’s a good idea,’ but they organized themselves.” And they continue to enjoy success with their new show The Kardashians on Hulu.
They may be the first family of reality television, but The Osbournes were perhaps the first family to really popularize the format.
