TV Host Keltie Knight Gets Real About Her 'Expensive' Facelift: 'Best Thing I Ever Did'

E! co-host Keltie Knight, 44, called having a facelift at age 41 "the best thing I ever did even though it was so expensive," in an essay published Tuesday, May 26, in Glamour.

After trying less expensive non-invasive procedures including Kybella and CoolSculpting, the Emmy-winning journalist confessed, "You think, 'Well, it’s not invasive; the worst thing that’ll happen is that it doesn’t work.' But actually, the worst thing that happens is it disfigures your face."

At age 35 in 2017, Knight underwent neck surgery with Los Angeles-based Dr. Jason Diamond to fix what she described as "a little wattle in my neck...the bottom of my chin where my neck hung down like a chicken."

She tried a "minimally invasive necklift” due to her young age.

According to Knight, "He essentially went in and kind of sewed the muscle together like a corset and said something to the effect of, 'This is going to last you five years, and then at that point, you’ll come back for a facelift.'”

Sure enough, her skin was sagging again by 2023, and she was ready for a facelift at age 41.

"I didn’t really know if I was going to tell anyone," she admitted, due to her young age.

"I went through with the surgery and was back to work on camera after two weeks," she wrote. "Everyone was like, 'Oh my God, you’re so snatched, you look great, have you lost weight?' That’s the power of choosing the right doctor, because even the way he stitched it — I swear to God, it was like couture. A couture facelift. It was the most delicate facelift I’ve ever seen in my life. It probably helped that I was so young."

While the procedure was expected to take three to four hours, Knight was under-the-knife for nine hours.

She wrote, "That’s because when Dr. Diamond pulled back my face, there was so much scar tissue from the filler and the threads and the microneedling and all the medi-spa s--- I had done that it was basically frying my face underneath. Now I can say that facelift is the best thing I ever did even though it was so expensive. (And no, I didn’t get a deal, because I had no intention of talking about it.)"

While Knight fixed her face, she was also going through microcytic anemia, a blood disorder that led to a 2024 hysterectomy "to ease symptoms," she wrote.

"At the same time, I was undergoing a major health issue with my uterus, and yet I wanted to do the facelift before taking care of an actual medical issue," she continued. "I was disgusted with myself. It was like, 'I want to die because of my uterine condition, but I’m going to fix my face first.'"

Knight got her start as a Rockette before moving to television with The Insider in 2011, and confessed, "I didn’t know that I wasn’t the best and the prettiest until I got to Los Angeles."

When she started appearing in magazines, she wrote, "The trolls started coming for me. At first they were like, 'Her face looks like a horse.' Then it was, 'She’s got b--- holes for eyes.' And then it was like, 'Is that Steven Tyler?'”

It took a toll on her self-worth.

"When I was at The Insider in 2011, I would look across the studio at Entertainment Tonight and see [former host] Nancy O’Dell, who is a human Barbie doll," she wrote. "But now I look back at pictures of me during that time, and I was also so pretty. There was absolutely nothing wrong with me. I know why the producers hired me. But I couldn’t see that."

She continued, "The more I let myself be eaten alive by the Hollywood machine, the uglier I got. The more I messed with my hair, the more it broke off. The more I started with my eyebrows, the worse shape they were in. The more I obsessed over my skin, the more it broke out. And so I progressed backward, in a way. If I look at pictures of me starting out in 2011, I was blonde and cute, and had energy. If I look at a picture of me five years later my eyes are hollow. I am sad."