Reality TV’s cosmetic surgery conversations rarely arrive without noise, and Bobby Norris knew exactly what was coming.
The Only Way Is Essex favourite, 39, appeared on This Morning with Cat Deeley and Ben Shephard on Wednesday to speak publicly about his recent face and neck lift, which he had in Turkey in March. He also underwent a lower blepharoplasty, a procedure on the lower eyelids.
Norris had already been documenting his recovery on social media, including the swelling and healing process, and told viewers he chose to do that because he wanted to be transparent about what he had done.
Why Bobby Norris decided to have surgery
Speaking on the ITV daytime show, Norris said the decision came after years of what he described as “abusing fillers”.
“There was just nothing subtle about it, and it’s so important for people to realise, although fillers aren’t permanent, it’s not a surgery, there’s always a line you can cross,” he said.
He compared the impact on his skin to “filling up a balloon for ten years” and then removing the volume, adding that the skin had become “stretched out and baggy”.
Norris joked that he had started to look like a “space hopper”, but his point was serious: once he had the fillers dissolved, he felt no skincare product could address the looseness left behind.
“By the time I removed them all, there wasn’t going to be a cream on a market that was going to get me there,” he said.
A health scare changed his outlook
Norris also told Cat Deeley and Ben Shephard that a serious health scare last year affected how he thought about the operation. He said a doctor told him at one stage that he could be “dead in 12 hours”.
He explained that the experience pushed him towards the surgery because “tomorrow isn’t guaranteed”, even though he knew he would face criticism for having a facelift while still in his 30s.
He said he expected to be “torn a new one on social media”, a prediction that did not require psychic gifts.
Fans react to his new appearance
After Norris shared a clip of his This Morning appearance on Instagram, viewers quickly commented on how different he looked. Norris has said his face is still swollen as he continues to heal.
Some fans were stunned by the change.
- “Omg if it wasn’t for his voice I wouldn’t have known it was him,” Eva Konn wrote.
- “If I hadn’t heard his voice I wouldn’t recognise him,” sassalj commented.
- “He looks unrecognisable,” sim_j_gondalia added.
- “This makes me a bit sad,” amylcs88 wrote.
Others said they felt upset that Norris had felt the need to alter his appearance.
“I love Bobby but I feel so sad that he wasn’t happy in himself and felt the need to get all this work done. He is such a funny and gorgeous person,” gemzzz83 commented.
“This makes me sad, because he really didn’t need to change anything,” roseinfath_ added.
Others defended his decision
Plenty of viewers also pushed back against the criticism and urged people to give him time to recover.
“Bobby is such a beautiful soul. I wish nothing but happiness for him. ‘Do what makes you feel better,’” VasJMorgan posted.
StephenWilliamHair noted that swelling can take time to settle, writing: “Let’s give the swelling a chance to go down before commenting. It varies with everyone and can take a year to settle.”
Another supporter, loulouchar, wrote: “Be kind. People forgot this motto… do what makes you feel happy, isn’t anyone else to judge. No one’s perfect. Love Bobby.”
Bobby says he does not regret it
Asked on This Morning whether he might regret the surgery, Norris said he felt he had reached the point where he had “no choice”.
He reflected on watching old episodes of Towie during lockdown, when ITV was airing past episodes of the reality series. Seeing a decade of his appearance play out on screen, he said, made the changes harder to ignore.
“When we went into lockdown, ITV were playing a lot of old Towies and it’s like looking through a photo album and it was a decade of my life, different nose, different teeth,” he said.
“Over the course of a few weeks, I could see what trolls had been saying for years, and you don’t notice subtle things about yourself when you’re changing them and it wasn’t until I sat back in lockdown, then I started to get into my fitness.”
He added that he wanted to remove all his fillers, but felt he had already gone beyond the point where dissolving them alone would be enough.
“For me, I thought, I wanted to remove all my fillers but I had crossed a line so, I can’t really regret having the facelift because this is almost corrective of the abuse I had given myself,” Norris said.
He also said he would not rule out having more surgery in the future if he felt it was necessary.
This Morning airs weekdays at 10am on ITV1.
