Joey King said she did not get a facelift before the Met Gala, cutting through the online chatter that followed her appearance at this year’s event. On the Friday, September 11 episode of Owen Thiele’s In Your Dreams podcast, she said the look people read as cosmetic surgery came from preparation, not a procedure.
Joey King on September 11
“I didn’t get a facelift,” she said, before adding, “I’m glad we’re talking about this. … Just want to let you know, didn’t get work done, didn’t get a facelift.” The 27-year-old actor also said, “What I did do, I got a spray tan,” and later explained, “And then I did a 36-hour fast. No food, nothing but water, which I don’t promote that.”
That sequence matters because King was not talking in the abstract. She said she had attended a bachelorette party the weekend before the Met Gala, then said the drinking left her “looking swollen.” By the day before fashion’s biggest night, she said she had already added a lymphatic massage and a facial, then another face massage on the day of the event.
Met Gala prep
King said the work was deliberate. “We were doing everything we could to look amazing on the carpet, and guess what, it worked because everybody thought I had plastic surgery,” she said. That line is the clearest account of how a temporary change in appearance turned into facelift speculation: the combination of fasting, water-only intake, a spray tan, and multiple treatments made the final result look different enough to trigger a bigger story.
She wore a sheer Miu Miu gown at this year’s Met Gala and attended for the second year in a row, which kept her visible in the exact setting where red-carpet scrutiny is most compressed. A separate Met Gala walkaway recollection shows how quickly those appearances can become part of the event’s afterlife, even when the conversation starts somewhere else.
Why the rumor stuck
Back in May, King’s Met Gala appearance became the target of cosmetic-surgery speculation because the visual shift was obvious enough for people to assign a medical explanation to it. She answered it directly on a podcast rather than letting the rumor sit, and that choice keeps the record simple: she says the change came from preparation, not surgery.
For readers, the practical takeaway is straightforward. King has now said what she did before the Met Gala, where she said it, and why the rumor spread. What remains is only the image itself — the same one that made a spray tan, fasting, and massage look like something more permanent.
