Sharon Osbourne has revealed she “felt terrible” over her and Ozzy Osbourne‘s daughter Aimee not being a bit of their hit ’00s reality series The Osbournes.
The MTV series, which starred Ozzy, his wife Sharon, and children Jack and Kelly, aired from 2002-2005 and paved the way for personality-driven reality TV shows. Although the show helped Jack and Kelly to launch their own careers, the eldest sibling made the decision to opt out of participating.
In an appearance on the Howie Mandel Does Stuff podcast, Osbourne was asked how she handled Aimee’s decision to stay out of the limelight.
“Yes it was [a discussion] in the beginning,” she said. “It was very, very hard on me because we were traveling all over the world, we were doing a million things and Aimee wasn’t a part of it. It made me feel terrible because I didn’t have my whole family.
“She just didn’t want the attention. She was 18, that’s a tough age for a girl, and she just didn’t want it.”
Aimee went on to launch a music career under the stage name ARO but Osbourne maintained that she still has no interest in fame.
“She doesn’t like it, no. She loves writing, she loves singing, but she doesn’t want to be a pop star,” she said. “She wants to be a professional singer and writer. That’s it. She’s not looking for fame and power. She’s happy doing what she does.”
In 2020, Aimee said that she “always really valued my privacy” having been aware of the attention having a famous family would give her.
“For me personally, for who I am, as far as morally, and also just to give myself a chance to actually develop into a human being as opposed to just being remembered for being a teenager, it didn’t really line up with what I saw my future as,” she said.
Aimee went on to say that The Osbournes “definitely worked great for the rest of my family”, but explained she “just knew it was never something that I would have been able to consider realistically.”
The singer previously said that appearing on the show would have had a negative impact on her music career, “and I felt if I’d stayed with The Osbournes and done the whole thing, I would have been typecast right away.”
Speaking to NME in 2020, Aimee said that she had chosen the stage name of ARO as a way of stepping away from the associations of the Osbourne name.
“My motivation for the music has never been huge fame, or huge success. These things are great if you can handle them, but I really wanted the music to speak for itself and I wanted to give it a fair chance. That’s why I came up with an alternative name for the project. But that’s not to say in a few years I might release something under a different name. But right now, for my sense of independence, that’s why I did it as well.”
