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The Young and the Restless late actress Jeanne Cooper is no stranger to controversy. She is also no stranger to addressing controversies with her forthrightness, endearing herself to fans who still love and miss her presence in the daytime soap opera. The same is true when Jeanne Cooper, who played Katherine Chancellor for over forty decades, made waves in the ’80s over filming getting a facelift on the show.
In her long tenure as an actress on The Young and the Restless, the intrepid Jeanne Cooper never shied away from revealing the gritty aspects of her life for the show. Cooper, who played Katherine Chancellor on the CBS soap from 1974 until just before her death in 2013, used most of her real-life struggles as storylines on the show.
The actress has been candid about her struggles with alcoholism and her cheating ex-husband, which all ended up being plot points in the series. So it’s no surprise that when Cooper decided to get a facelift in 1984, it turned into a storyline for her character on the show. Footage from the real-life procedure aired on The Young and the Restless 40 years ago, on March 28, 1984.
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It is wise to remember that back then, cosmetic procedures weren’t the norm that they are today. So when Jeanne Cooper’s real-life facelift made it into the show, it became the most-watched episode in the series at the time. Decades later, in 2012, Cooper opened up about her on- and off-screen facelifts, telling “The Talk” and co-host Sheryl Underwood just whose idea it was to film her real-life facelift and incorporate it into the show.
Cooper said it was her idea to film her real-life facelift and quipped, “I walked by a mirror one day and scared the hell out of myself.”
Cooper explained cameras were rolling when she saw her post-surgery results for the first time, saying, “Everything that happened in that storyline was first-hand. And you saw Everything as I saw it.”
Jeanne Cooper said it was The Young and the Restless creator Brad Bell’s idea to incorporate real-life facelift into the show.
In a 2009 Television Academy interview, Jeanne Cooper provided more insight into the controversial on-air facelift. Copper said when she asked Young and the Restless co-creator Bill Bell for time off to recover from her facelift, he thought it would be great to incorporate it into the show.
Copper recalled, “He came down to the dressing room one day and said, ‘Jeanne, how would you feel if we put Katherine through this?’ I said, ‘Well, it’s a very good idea since I’m going through it now, and I am Katherine.’
Cooper was adamant about the details, telling the creator that the show had to capture the facelift in a “documentary fashion … every step of the way, the emotions that one goes through and so on and so forth,” all caught on camera in real-time.
Cooper revealed that The Young and the Restless’s cameras were rolling in the operating room when she went under the knife. The cameras were also rolling when Jeanne Cooper had her bandages removed the next day. Thus, a historic moment was created, and CBS garnered the highest ratings ever.
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