According to tabloid magazine Us Weekly, E! News has already found a replacement for Giuliana Rancic.
The svelte star will have her shoes filled by reported frenemy Maria Menounos, 37. ‘They were over her,’ an unnamed source told the magazine of Giuliana. ‘She received so much negative press about her weight, and then the Fashion Police debacle with Zendaya.’
Still, E! insisted in an official statement that any animosity between the network and Giuliana – who began hosting E! News in 2005 – was ‘entirely inaccurate.’
A few months before Giuliana’s announcement, she was accused of making a racist comment about Zendaya Coleman’s hair at the Oscars. Giuliana had said that Zendaya’s hair looked as though it ‘smelt of patchouli oil or weed’ on the Oscars special episode, prompting Fashion Police co-host Kelly Osbourne to quit the show.
Following the joke, Zendaya said that the comments were ‘not only a large stereotype but outrageously offensive.’ She only accepted Giuliana’s apology after the TV personality reached out via Twitter and on-the-air.
As for Maria, another source quoted by Us Weekly insisted that there had been friction between the two stars over the past year: ‘From day one, Giuliana took all the plum assignments. She tried to have Maria banished.’ Maria had left a high-profile job as the host of Extra in order to take a new position at E! in 2014 – she has co-hosted Live From E! since then.