Elisabeth Finch, the queer former Grey’s Anatomy writer, and co-executive producer who faked having cancer, is back in the headlines this week because Peacock just released Anatomy of Lies, a docuseries about the hoax.
The 47-year-old accused grifter’s name was first splashed across the front page back in March 2022 when The Anklerpublished an exposé alleging that she had been lying about a rare cancer diagnosis, which even inspired a few episodes of the steamy medical drama.
The wild lies she told are the subject of the new documentary series, including the fact that she shaved her own head and faked having to take breaks to throw up in the bathroom to further her story, EW reports.
Courtesy of Peacock
Elisabeth Finch is a television writer who worked on shows like True Blood and The Vampire Diaries before landing a job as a writer on Grey’s Anatomy based on the lie that she had cancer.
While working on The Vampire Diaries, she began telling family, friends, and colleagues that she had been diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer called chondrosarcoma and would have to go through chemotherapy. It was an essay she penned for Elle about her experience living with cancer that caught the eye of Grey’s Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes, who was so impressed she offered her a job.
Courtesy of ABC
“I’ve never had any form of cancer,” she later admitted to The Ankler after her lies had been exposed. “I told a lie when I was 34 years old and it was the biggest mistake of my life. It just got bigger and bigger and bigger and got buried deeper and deeper inside me.”
But if that wasn’t bad enough, she also claimed that she had to have a life-saving abortion after becoming pregnant while undergoing chemotherapy. She went on to tell people that she had to have part of her tibia removed as part of her cancer treatment and that she lost a kidney because of her chemo treatments. According to a Vanity Fair report that came out in 2022, Finch also told people the wild lie that True Blood star Anna Paquin had donated a kidney to her (although Finch claims she never said this), People reported.
Her myriad health conditions weren’t the only thing she lied to those close to her about. She also told people that a close friend died during the 2018 domestic terrorist attack at the Tree of Life Synagogue, even though she didn’t know any of the victims. Despite her older brother being alive and well, she also told colleagues that he was abusive during their childhood and that he attempted suicide but ended up shooting himself in a non-fatal way, which forced her to make the decision to pull the plug and end her brother’s life.
Sadly, Finch’s lies finally caught up to her after she got married. In 2019, she checked herself into a mental health clinic after claiming she had PTSD from her experience with the Tree of Life tragedy (which she lied about). There, she met mother-of-five Jennifer Beyer, who was dealing with PTSD in the aftermath of an abusive marriage. The two fell in love and got married in 2020, but before long, Beyer found herself questioning Finch’s stories. A little internet sleuthing later, and Beyer confirmed her worst suspicions. Then, two years after they tied the knot, while the couple was getting divorced, Beyer told Rimes and Grey’s Anatomy showrunner Kris Vernoff about what she had discovered. After doing their own investigation, the executives at Shondaland and Disney confirmed that Finch had been lying.
The docuseries is based on a two-part Vanity Fair article by Evgenia Peretz, who also directed the show alongside her husband, David Schisgall. The three-part series tells the story of Finch's increasingly complicated web of lies beginning in 2015 and takes viewers through the publication of the bombshell article that exposed all of her lies.
Finch refused to take part in the docuseries, but after its release, she posted a long statement on Instagram that said in part, "I trapped myself in the addiction of lies, betraying and traumatizing my closest family, friends, and colleagues. I'm making amends and expressing my genuine remorse as best I can when people are ready. And I've accepted the fact that some may never be. I've been receiving mental health treatment for nearly three years, and I work hard every day to sustain a life where the truth matters more than anything."
After getting caught, she was placed on administrative leave and then resigned from Grey’s Anatomy and checked herself into the same mental health facility where she went to deal with her faux PTSD. Then, more than six months later, she confessed to her long string of lies in an interview with The Ankler. She hasn’t returned to television writing since.
