Melanie Brown Replaces Sharon Osbourne on America's Got Talent

USMagazine, Thursday, February 21, 2013, 6:20am (PST)

America's Got Talent has replaced one English judge with another! Spice Girl Melanie Brown will be replacing Sharon Osbourne on the NBC live competition show.

Entertainment Weekly reports that 37-year-old Mel B (aka Scary Spice) will join Howard Stern and Howie Mandel on the judging panel for Season 8. Brown has had previous experience working on reality competition shows. She starred with Ronan Keating, Guy Sebastian and Natalie Bassingthwaighte on the Australian version of The X Factor in 2011, and acted as co-host of the Australian version of Dancing With the Stars in February 2012.

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"I've known Melanie since she did Dancing with the Stars, and I've known her as a performer in The Spice Girls before that," Paul Telegdy, NBC president of alternative programming, told Entertainment Weekly. "To know her is to know a very frank, strong, enduring entertainer. Someone who has a very strong point of view. We needed somebody who was qualified for the job. She's an amazing singer, dancer and a huge personality. The contestants will get a lot of constructive feedback from her and I can't wait to see her chemistry with Howard and Howie."

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Osbourne, 60, quit the show in August 2012 amid controversy: she claimed that NBC fired her son Jack from a reality series following his multiple sclerosis diagnosis earlier. "I just can't be fake," Osbourne told the Post. "It's discrimination, and it was badly handled."

And The Talk co-host accepted the penalty of leaving the series early while being under contract, explaining, "All they can do is stop me from being a judge on another network for five years."

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Tell Us: Are you excited to watch Mel B as a judge on America's Got Talent?

This article originally appeared on Usmagazine.com: Melanie Brown Replaces Sharon Osbourne on America's Got Talent