Jack Osbourne agreed to The Osbournes to buy a car
Jack Osbourne did not initially want to star in MTV's The Osbournes - until his mum Sharon Osbourne told him he would earn a fortune, and could buy a car.
Jack Osbourne did The Osbournes to buy a car.
The then-16-year-old media personality was initially reluctant to do the fly-on-the-wall MTV reality show - which followed the raw and unscripted lives of his late dad Ozzy Osbourne, 76, mum Sharon Osbourne, 73, and sister Kelly Osbourne, 41, in Los Angeles, California.
But Jack, 40, agreed to do the programme after Sharon told him each of them would get paid a reported $20,000 per episode for the first season's 10-episode run.
Jack is quoted by the new issue of Best magazine as saying: "They paid us really well. Kelly (my sister) and I did a few things for MTV, so we had a brainstorm.
"Some people used to watch TV then. I was reluctant going into it, I was 16, Mum said, 'You will get paid for this. It is like a job.'
"I was like, 'Will I be able to buy a car?' And she was like, 'Absolutely!' I was like, 'OK, I wanna buy a car.' That is the only reason why I did it."
For season two, Sharon reportedly asked MTV that each family member got given $5 million, for a total of a $20 million salary.
But with the huge chunk of cash came serious struggles with fame for Jack.
He explained: "It was just so weird, and it organically unfolded. It was crazy and wacky in our own world.
"And we woke up to hordes of people waiting outside our house, being chased by paparazzi and the president talking about us. It was very strange. It was hard.
"Fame comes as a prickly price. It is all fine and well to get the benefits of it, but being 16 with no anonymity - it is difficult."
The Osbournes - which ran from 2002 until 2005 - was ground-breaking for reality TV, in that it created a new genre by bringing cameras into a famous family's home to document their day-to-day lives.
It also proved there was a massive appetite for seeing celebrities as flawed and authentic individuals, paving the way for the likes of Disney+'s The Kardashians, and BBC One's Stacey and Joe.
And Jack feels "proud to have changed the zeitgeist of TV".
The I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here! 2025 star added: "It was kinda cool."
