After years of filler, threads and noninvasive treatments, Keltie Knight says her facelift surgery became far more difficult than expected. In a personal essay for Glamour, the TV host opened up about the beauty pressure she faced on camera and why she ultimately decided to come clean about the procedures she’s undergone.
Knight shared that concerns about her neck started nearly a decade ago after she noticed what she called “a little wattle” under her chin. After trying treatments like Kybella and CoolSculpting, she says the results only made things worse. “The worst thing that happens is it disfigures your face,” she wrote, explaining that removing too much fat left her with sagging skin. In 2017, she underwent a minimally invasive necklift with Beverly Hills, CA plastic surgeon Jason Diamond, MD, who told her at the time she was still “too young for a facelift.”
Years later, while filming CBS’s Superfan, Knight said the looseness in her neck had returned to the point where her glam team was helping conceal it on camera. “My makeup artist and hairstylist were basically tucking my loose skin into turtlenecks,” she wrote. That’s when she decided it was finally time for a facelift at 41. While her surgery was originally expected to take three to four hours, Knight revealed it ultimately lasted nearly nine.
What she didn’t expect was how complicated the operation would become. “There was so much scar tissue from the filler and the threads and the microneedling and all the medi-spa shit I had done,” she wrote.
Still, Knight says the facelift was worth it. “Now I can say that facelift is the best thing I ever did,” she wrote, adding that she returned to work on camera just two weeks later.
But the essay goes far beyond surgery. Knight candidly described how years of working in television affected the way she viewed herself, especially while standing beside celebrities and models on red carpets. “Staying young, having a certain look, fitting in a certain dress, that is not vanity, that’s hireability,” she wrote.
Knight also reflected on using a GLP-1 medication after feeling pressure around her body and appearance in Hollywood, saying the compliments she received after losing weight reinforced the idea that she looked “better” thinner.
Now, she says confidence has finally started to come easier with age. “I’m so much more confident at 44 than I was at 34,” she wrote near the end of the essay. And after years of keeping her facelift private, she says she no longer wants to hide it. “What if that actually is freeing?”
