14 DAY TRIAL // The blowback for Giuliana Rancic’s racially insensitive comment about Zendaya Coleman’s Oscars 2015 hair is still being felt, even though Rancic apologized and the 18-year-old Disney star gracefully accepted it.
Kelly Osbourne, Rancic’s co-host on E!’s Fashion Police, is now out of the picture, with reports saying that chances are that she was fired rather than quit. Insiders are now claiming that Giuliana wasn’t as innocent as she tried to make herself appear when she blamed the writers for her snafu: this was her way at getting back at Zendaya.
Zendaya was considered for the job, Rancic must have felt threatened
Comedienne Joan Rivers, the heart and soul of Fashion Police, died last August, and for a short while, producers even considered the possibility of pulling the plug on the show altogether, rather than see it die a slow death in the ratings without her.
Eventually, the call was made to continue with it, after Kathy Griffin was signed for the job. Radar Online is now saying that, before this happened, producers looked at another option as well: that of rebooting the lineup altogether.
Osbourne was said to be looking into other options, while Rancic was on the fence, verging towards not coming back. It was then that producers auditioned Zendaya for the job, thinking she could take over from the E! veteran.
After all, she’d been on the show a few times as a guest, and Joan Rivers had taken a great liking to her, which, as you must know, wasn’t exactly common occurrence.
“Giuliana knew that Zendaya had been up for the role,” a spy reveals. “It definitely seems like she had this in mind when she made the comments towards Zendaya.”
No innocent joke, this was planned revenge
If this is true, it casts a whole different light on Rancic’s apology, because it means she lied about it. She obviously had it in for Zendaya and thought shaming her publicly this way was the best revenge possible.
In the post-Oscars coverage, she said Zendaya’s choice to style her hair in dreadlocks made her think she smelled of “patchouli oil or weed,” which prompted a very upset but well-spoken response from the younger star.
Initially, Rancic tried to laugh off the controversy by saying she was only trying to praise Zendaya for going for a “bohemian chic” look, but when things got really bad online, she eventually owned up to the mistake. That is, if by “owning up” you understand blaming it on the writers.
Word online has it that the writers are now outraged because their job doesn’t involve writing jokes for Rancic, and that producers are thinking of letting her go, as the surest way to kill the scandal until it’s not too late and takes a toll on the ratings.
