Donna Mills Shuts Down Ageist Comment in Instagram Video

Donna Mills, 85, has spent decades perfecting her smoky eye; she is not about to stop now.

The Knots Landing star posted an Instagram Reel on April 5 responding to a commenter who told her she wore “too much makeup for your age.” In the video, Mills has blond hair and wears a black leather jacket, black lacy top, blue jeans and a full-glam look. She is unbothered. It takes her less than 30 seconds to deliver her message.

“I guess I didn’t get the memo,” she says.

She snaps her fingers, and the video cuts to Mills with gray hair up in a bun, wearing a ruffled blouse, wire-rimmed glasses, a string of pearls and less makeup. The joke lands before she even speaks.

“Did you want me to look like this?” she asks. “Sorry. Not sorry.”

Then she reappears in the leather jacket. “I like the way I look. This is my style. And style doesn’t have an expiration date, does it?”

Her caption is equally concise. “I said what I said,” she wrote, tagging it with #clapback and #armchairwarrior.

Actor Viola Davis, 60, wrote “Wooooohoooo!!!!!” with a string of applause hands and heart emojis, and fellow actor Octavia Spencer, 55, followed with six fire emojis of her own. Nancy Sinatra, 85, kept it simple: “You go girl!” with two double heart emojis. 

The post has pulled more than 95,000 likes and counting.

Mills, best known for playing the cunning Abby Cunningham on the CBS drama, which ran from 1979 to 1993, has been sharing makeup tips and tutorials for longer than Instagram has existed. In 2022, she told AARP that when she does fan events, “some show up wearing that dramatic eye makeup like my character, Abby!”

Mills has been growing a steady following on Instagram, where she regularly posts makeup tips, a nod to her beauty-icon status in the 1980s and her 55-minute 1986 makeup tutorial, “The Eyes Have It,” which was sold on VHS. As recently as February, she was back on Instagram sharing a brightening eye tip, captioning it: “It worked for me in the 80s ... and it’s still my favorite trick to bring eyes to life!”

Mills told Newsweek in January: “Makeup and acting have always walked hand in hand for me. When I was on Knots Landing, the glamour quotient was high, and suddenly my look became almost as important as my acting and scene work, so I leaned into it.”

She also told Newsweek: “As I’ve grown older in my career, my makeup and skincare have evolved right along with me. They’ve always been part of my storytelling. And I am grateful for the journey. And I still think the makeup aspect of my career is fun!”

The internet agrees.

Check out AARP’s Beauty & Style section for more tips on looking and feeling your best.

Disclaimer: The key takeaways were created with the assistance of generative AI. An AARP editor reviewed and refined the content for accuracy and clarity.