‘The Talk” is here in New York for a week of shows, fresh off its best-ever ratings (nearly 3 million viewers for the week ending Nov. 29) and several WTF? controversies involving co-host Sharon Osbourne. First, Osbourne blasted “The View” with an f-bomb during an appearance on “Arsenio” — then discussed her vaginal tightening surgery on the CBS gabfest (after first broaching the subject on Graham Norton’s British talk show).
I asked “Talk” den mother Julie Chen if Osbourne has gone a little too off-the-rails of late with her outrageous comments. Her answer? Nope.
“I never thought that, having worked four years with Sharon, that she could ever say anything to shock me,” says Chen about the vaginal tightening kerfuffle. “To be so bold and to own it, I was like, ‘All right, you go Sharon.’ That’s why women love her, because she speaks about taboo topics that some, if not many women, are dealing with but are too embarrassed to talk about. Good for her.”
Chen chalked Osbourne’s “f-you” to “The View” — the show to which “The Talk” is always compared — to some pre-show “Arsenio” conviviality. “What you saw was a perfect storm,” she says. “We had been sipping champagne backstage after a long day and Sharon gets loopy when she’s tired and after being asked about ‘The View’ for years, I got the feeling she was like, ‘Well, let’s give ’em what they wanna hear.’ That’s her sense of humor — good, bad, funny, right or wrong.”
Chen says the show’s annual visit to Manhattan is “a nice shot-in-the-arm for us” — Tuesday’s guests include Aretha Franklin and chef Todd English — and hints that the second half of this season could see “The Talk” (2 p.m./Ch. 2) doing more segments akin to its recent episode reuniting the cast of “The Love Boat” — “If we can get the right cast to agree to come on and everyone’s still speaking to each other or is still alive.”
Last, but not least . . .
Some of the kids featured in “The Short Game,” premiering Thursday on Netflix, will be at the Chelsea Piers driving range Tuesday (4 p.m.) to tee-off against all comers in a friendly competition . . . Steve Harvey will be inducted into the NAB Broadcasting Hall of Fame April 8 . . . Chanel Omari (“Princesses of Long Island”) and Delaina Dixon (“The Gossip Table”) celebrated the launch of pedicure.com at The DL (95 Delancey St.) . . . Andy Cohen and Wendy Williams host NYWITF’s 33rd annual Muse Awards Thursday at the New York Hilton honoring Connie Britton, Robin Wright and Sonia Manzano, among others . . . Music industry vet and ex-Agency Group president Steve Martin has joined LA-based APA as EVP, Worldwide Music, based in New York . . . Ch. 55 airs the Hollywood Christmas Parade on Sunday, Dec. 22 (2:30 p.m.) with hosts Erik Estrada, Laura McKenzie, Dean Cain and Montel Williams.