‘We don’t have a great relationship,’ Ozzy Osbourne’s son said days before musician’s death
Jack Osbourne has said that he is “not close at all” with his sister Aimee, who shunned an appearance on the reality show that propelled their family to fame.
Jack, 39, appeared on fly-on-the-wall reality series The Osbournes alongside his sister Kelly, mother Sharon and father Ozzy, the Black Sabbath frontman who died last month aged 76.
The family – including Aimee – were seen grieving Ozzy at a bench honouring Ozzy during a Birmingham parade ahead of the singer’s private funeral.
Jack reflected on his relationship with Aimee, 41, days before Ozzy’s death, telling podcast Disrespectfully “we don’t have a great relationship” – and explaining why she decided to move out of the family home aged 16 instead of starring in The Osbournes.
“Back then she really wanted to be a musician and the kind of musician she wanted to be was like a Fiona Apple, Mazzy Star. And she deemed doing a show on MTV as low-hanging fruit,” he explained.
“She was like, ‘I’m not going to be seen riding coat-tails,’ kind of thing – that’s how she perceived it.”
Jack said that, “once the show became hugely successful, I think she was kind of like, ‘Well I can’t come on now because I don’t want to be seen as jumping on the bandwagon’.”
“And she dug her heels in and wanted to be relatively private and obscure,” he said.
However, Jack admitted that he has never asked his sister if she regrets her decision.
“I’ve never asked her outright, ‘Do you regret it’. I think there must be a level of like, ‘Hey, my life would have probably been different than what it is if I’d done that,’ so I don’t know. I think I would feel like I would have regretted it.
“I’ve never had the conversation with her. We’re not close at all. We don’t have a great relationship – she’ll be the first to tell you that, so it’s no secret.
Sharon, 72, previously said she “regrets every day” that Aimee decided to move out instead of appearing on The Osbournes.
“She felt too that she didn’t want to grow up on camera,” the former X Factor judge said on US series The Talk. “She hated the idea. It was appalling to her.”
Reflecting on her decision to keep away from the reality show that propelled her siblings to stardom, Aimee told The Independent in 2015: “Obviously, I would have liked to stay at home a little longer, but it wasn’t to be.”
She said “it felt like I was swimming in the ocean, all by myself” for years after making her decision.
Kelly, reflecting on her relationship with Aimee, told the Armchair Expert podcast in 2021 that she “doesn’t talk” to her sister” as “we’re just really different”.
“She doesn’t understand me and I don’t understand her,” Kelly told host Dax Shepard.
This echoed sentiments shared by Aimee who told The Independent that she doesn’t “socialise” with Kelly, 40.
“I wouldn’t say there is an ease between us, but there is an acceptance,” she said.
Aimee, who had a voice role in Postman Pat: The Move in 2014, released her debut studio album, Vacare Adamaré, in 2020.
Sharon married Ozzy in 1982. The couple celebrated their 43rd wedding anniversary just weeks before Ozzy died on 22 July, following a string of illnesses.
They had been effusive about one another in interviews and on social media, with the Black Sabbath frontman previously sharing that the “best moment” of his life was meeting Sharon.
