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Following the show’s month-long hiatus, The Talk finally returned with a new episode to televisions across the country today. In a special on diversity and inclusion, Sheryl Underwood opened up about how she felt during the heated conversation with former co-host Sharon Osbourne that went down — and on what life has been like in the aftermath since.
“I feel like I’m in PTSD because it was a trauma,” Underwood said during today’s episode on how she’s been feeling since Osbourne’s fiery attack on her back in March. Sharing more details on how it’s been important for her to move forward from that incident, she continued, “And I feel like I want to get past this because I really wanted to get back to work with my friends and my colleagues and the crew — but I also wanted to get back to the audience.”
If you recall, things got intense amidst the co-host’s coverage of Piers Morgan’s harsh and unwarranted criticisms of Meghan Markle. Trying to defend Morgan — who is her friend — Osbourne targeted Underwood in a condescending and unsympathetic tone as she demanded to be educated on how and why she or Morgan might be considered racists — him for his commentary on Markle and her for defending his behavior. Following her unexpected outburst during the show, Osbourne was shortly after investigated by CBS and the show went on hiatus. Then, towards the end of last month, it was announced that she would no longer be a part of the show.
Underwood also chose to address all the conflicting reports surrounding whether Osbourne had reached out to her to apologize following her uncalled-for blow-up. As we reported, Osbourne initially apologized to viewers of the show the day after the incident aired. More recently, on April 6, Underwood said that she still hadn’t received an apology from the former co-host — something Osbourne refuted the next day. According to the latter, and the screenshots of text messages she shared as proof, she had in fact reached out to Underwood to apologize but just didn’t hear anything back.
“I want to clear something up,” Underwood said during today’s episode about the discrepancies regarding whether Osbourne cleared the air with her. “There was a discussion about Sharon and I communicating with each other — I have not spoken to [her] and do not have any phone call, missed or received, that I can find in my phone [from her].”
“But there were text messages sent to me,” she explained, confirming that Osbourne did reach out in some form. “And the reason I did not speak about, or acknowledge, or even respond to those text messages [was] because they were coming to me during the internal investigation. I’ve never been through anything like this so I didn’t know if you were supposed to communicate or not communicate while there’s an internal investigation,” Underwood emphasized. “I have not spoken to Sharon, I have not had a phone call from her.”
Overall, today’s episode was a deep, emotional, and powerful one. Underwood also discussed her fears and hyper-awareness surrounding being pinned as “the Angry Black Woman” during her conversation with Osbourne — and how the anxiety from that has affected her then and since the moment went down. To see a clip of the special episode, view the video down below.
