Y&R's Michelle Stafford/Phyllis memorial disguise mashup
Credit: Bjoern Kommerell, Howard Wise/JPI

Phyllis has pulled off some crazy plots in her years on The Young and the Restless, but she may have just topped them all. And no, we aren’t talking about her plot with Stark to fake her own death and frame Diane and run off to abandon her family forever. Though that is a pretty crazy plan… No, instead, we’re talking about Phyllis disguising herself as one of the help to attend her own funeral — and getting away with it!

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When you get right down to it, it’s that last part that’s left viewers’ jaws on the floor. How could no one recognize her with a wig and glasses?! Just take a look at the comments section in yesterday’s recaps! Folks weren’t buying the wig, they weren’t buying the glasses (Hey, it’s worked for Superman for 85 years!), they weren’t buying any of it!

Phyllis thinking Y&R

OK, granted, it’s not as elaborate as the one Sheila was running around in over on The Bold and the Beautiful before her latest arrest (or when Sheila was running around with Phyllis’ face!) but there probably is something to be said to us about the human mind not seeing what we aren’t expecting. If everyone thinks Phyllis is dead and they see someone who might look kind of like her, but not quite, the mind might just slide right over them.

As Michelle Helmeczy suggested over on Twitter (while still doubtful that it could’ve worked that well), folks weren’t “exactly looking for Phyllis. More so concentrating on the dead, I guess.”


Then there’s Tami’s point that “No one really pays attention to the staff!” Especially when we’re talking about Genoa City here. This is a bunch of rich people at a funeral. The staff is there to serve drinks (having a funeral in a lounge is definitely a choice, Summer) and hold their coats.

In the end, there were so many folks speaking out, Michelle Stafford herself took notice and decided it was time to step into the fray. Because it sounds like the disguise did actually work — even when it wasn’t supposed to!

“Ok,” she tweeted, “For all of you lovers going off on Phyllis’ disguise. I want you to know. I stood in the set for an hour and my coworkers didn’t even recognize me.”

“Truly,” she added in the replies, “no one recognized me.” Even Joshua Morrow (Nick) “walked right past me after I said hi. It was so funny!”

There you go. It’s hard to argue with those results! Maybe it’s just easier for us to recognize her because we knew what was happening. Either way, Phyllis seems to be pulling it off — how long, though, is another matter! The fact that she isn’t sticking to the plan makes us doubt she’s going to be able to stay dead as long as Stark is hoping!

Check out our photo gallery of the many lies, loves and plots of our dear Phyllis.