The complex irreducible representations of the symmetric group carry an important canonical basis called the Kazhdan-Lusztig basis. Although it is difficult to express how general permutations act on this basis, some distinguished permutations have beautiful descriptions. In 2010 Rhoades showed that the long cycle $(1, 2,..., n)$ acts by the jeu-de-taquin promotion operator in the case when the irreducible representation is indexed by a rectangular partition. We prove a generalisation of this theorem in two directions: on the one hand we lift the restriction on the shape of the partition, and on the other hand we enlarge the result to the collection of all separable permutations.