When it came to getting Kelly Osbourne to participate on Dancing With the Stars, apparently the ninth time was the charm.
The princess of darkness told E! News that she accepted producers' offer to take to the parquet this year only after snubbing them the previous eight seasons.
"There's a number of reasons," she said of why she finally took the show up on its offer, "mainly because it really scares me."
Even more frightening to Osbourne? The all-too-soon loss of a seeming growing number of contemporaries, including DJ AM, from drugs, a topic with which she's intimately familiar.
"It's a constant reminder that sometimes you don't have control over it," she said of AM's sudden death. "It's really scary because if it can happen to someone like him, it can happen to anyone."
Including herself.
Osbourne, whose autobiography, Fierce, came out this week in the U.K., admitted that at one point she was taking 50 Vicodin a day.
"I had no control over it. I didn't know what day it was. If I can share that pain and misery with someone to say, 'Don't do this,' it means more to me to help one person than to keep my mouth shut."
As for her new incarnation as a clean-living ballroom dancer, Osbourne said she's just as surprised as anyone (except for maybe her mother, Sharon) that she agreed to join in.
"It's one of those shows that a lot of people who are trying to revamp their career go into and do," she said of her earlier reticence to sign on. "And moody me would be like, oh, that's sad, I'm not doing that. But secretly I'm like, look how fit they get and look at those amazing dresses they get made for them, and they look like they're having so much fun.
"I'm turning 25 during the show and I just don't want to have any regrets anymore; I just wanna have fun. How many people in the world get an opportunity like this…and get paid for it?"
Not that dancing won't come with some costs, albeit mainly to her ego.
While partner Louis van Amstel told E! News he had zero expectations of the reality vet, that's not, strictly speaking, true. He just had really, really poor expectations.
"I didn't think she'd actually even know left from right," he said.
Oh, that flatterer.
"I think people are gonna be shocked."
But not flashed.
"It's not appropriate," van Amstel said of the idea of Osbourne donning the show's trademark light-on-fabric ensembles. "We're not going for that skimpy…let Edyta, Karina, let them do that."
It's probably safe to say they're already ahead of you on that one.
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Tune in to D10 tonight at 7:30 to see more of our interview with Kelly.
And brush up on the competition by checking out this season's celeb pairings in our Dancing With the Stars partners gallery.