The Ladybug explains why she couldn't tell her famous dad about 'The Masked Singer' (original) (raw)
WARNING: This article contains spoilers about Wednesday’s episode of The Masked Singer .
The lady couldn’t move so well as a bug.
On Wednesday, it was revealed that Kelly Osbourne, 35, was the celebrity inside that unwieldy insect costume on The Masked Singer. Here, the former TV personality who’s looking to make a big comeback talks about how those nerves of hers were real, and how she just couldn’t tell her famous dad, Ozzy, that she was part of TV’s big reality competition show.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: It’s extraordinary to see how many people guessed your identity correctly on YouTube. One person said on the message board that you have a tendency to hold your stomach before you sing. KELLY OSBOURNE: No. That is not accurate at all!
So were you nervous in that moment or was that some really good acting by Kelly Osbourne? No, I was absolutely terrified.
Did you choose “Holding Out for a Hero”? I did choose that song. I’m a huge Bonnie Tyler fan. I love all the ’80s power ballads. So I wanted to stick with something that I knew well. I knew it was a bit of a stretch because I haven’t sung in a long time. So it was definitely getting back into the swing of it, but I loved performing that song.
Is that what made you nervous, getting back into the swing of it? I took a lot of time off work to focus on myself. This was the first thing I’ve done in sobriety. You know, the nerves will get the better of you and make you believe that you can’t do it, you’re not good enough. As it went on, my confidence just grew and grew and grew.
The Southern accent was a great idea. Was that your idea or the producers? [Laughs] So basically, they kept reassuring me, “Oh, the voice modulator will completely throw them. You won’t even hear an accent.” I’m like, are you sure? And they said yes. And I literally said the first word, and I was like, “Oh my God, I sound English.” I have no idea where it came from, I have no idea how it happened, but I just started speaking in a Southern accent. And literally you could hear everyone backstage going like, laughing at me, because I just pulled it out of nowhere. It’s the only way I could do it without [the celebrity panelists] guessing.
It really threw everybody off. You really played up the vulnerability, too, while in that costume. Was that an act, or was that genuine? No. I will never pretend to be vulnerable. I think that does everybody a disservice.
Were you bummed they introduced you as being from a famous family? Do you feel like that was a dead giveaway?
No, because if you think about it, there are so many famous families.
The guesses were pretty damn good. What did you think of Lily Collins? I wish I could be Lily Collins. She’s one of the most stunning women I’ve ever seen in my life!
So that costume looked super heavy.
You have no idea. It was so heavy. I could never take a full breath of air, because of where it weighed. It was also top-heavy so if I didn’t stand in a certain way, the head part would flip forward. Underneath all of that, I was wearing American football padding. The skirt was five feet wide. I could hardly walk, I could hardly move, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t see, I couldn’t hear. Everything that makes you human got stripped from you.
So who in your immediate circle signed NDAs. Did your parents sign NDAs? We didn’t tell my dad at first, because my dad is too proud of a father who would go around being like, “Did you see my daughter? Have you seen my daughter?” We couldn’t tell him because he is a gossip like that. He wants to brag. So we were like, we cannot tell dad. Mom knew. And my brother, that was it.
Who did you watch with tonight?
My nieces. The Ladybug is their favorite, which is weird. I don’t know if that’s because subconsciously they know. I don’t know!
Was it an easy sell getting you to do this? I wanted to do it the first season, but it was my first year of sobriety, and I wasn’t ready to be in full swing again.
Is this a stepping stone for you to do more TV?
One-hundred percent. I just shot a pilot for Fox and fingers crossed that will go. I developed and wrote a scripted series that I am in the process of selling, a modern-day kind of Bridget Jones, with a social-media-influencer kind of vibe. Very funny. And just taking it slow. It’s all trial and error for me, figuring out what I want to do. From 15 to 33, I worked constantly. I never took vacations, I never took time off. It was a rare thing if I ever had any downtime. To take these last two years and really find myself, figure out what I want to do, what makes me happy… there was a long time where I went, I’ve done TV. I don’t want to do this anymore. But then I enjoy it and it is what I like to do.
Do you get a lot of feedback from people saying they miss Fashion Police? There’s a huge part of me that wants that back. But also in the world that we live in now, without Joan Rivers, you can’t get away with that kind of stuff. The tone has drastically changed. Joan could say those things and Joan was a woman, a lady. She had the respect. There’s a huge, huge void in my life since her passing.
I’m assuming you have watched the show like the rest of us. Do you have an early feeling of who’s going to go the distance? Okay, so you never know because I will tell you this: What you feel and see in the room isn’t what translates on TV sometimes. So I’ve watched on TV versus being there and watching it from backstage. You are so convinced that person is going home, blahblahblah. And that’s the person that stays. You just never know.
The Masked Singer airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET on Fox.
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