After emotionally announcing that she had cancer, Elisabeth Finch began turning up for work – pale, ill and obviously shaken – wearing a low-cut shirt.
It revealed what her colleagues believed to be a chemo port – a small, implantable device that delivers chemotherapy drugs and other infusions – on her chest.
Her colleagues’ sympathies were only heightened when they heard Finch being sick in the bathroom – a side-effect, they presumed, of the chemotherapy.
The truth, though, was rather different. For it turned out that Finch, then 37, had fabricated her cancer diagnosis, as well as lying about an astonishing array of other things, including claiming a friend had been killed in a mass shooting.
In short, she was a truly convincing actress – as talented as any of those she wrote for in her job as a scriptwriter for the blockbuster medical drama series Grey’s Anatomy.
So extraordinary is Finch’s story that it has been depicted in the docuseries Anatomy Of Lies – now available to stream in the UK – and, indeed, the real-life drama is even more gripping than some of the plot lines she concocted. Friends and colleagues she fooled so effectively have been left furious at her intricate deceptions.
‘She used her pretend cancer as a way to move up the ladder at Grey’s and also as a cudgel against anyone who might speak against her,’ former Grey’s writer – and head writer of another mega TV hit, Scandal – Mark Wilding told the Mail exclusively. ‘In 31 years in the business, I’ve never encountered anything remotely like this.’
Indeed, Finch was a significant player in Grey’s, as it’s commonly known. By the time she left the programme, after her lies were exposed in 2022, she had risen through the ranks to co-produce 172 episodes.
The cast of the blockbuster medical drama series Grey’s Anatomy. Now in its 21st series, Grey’s has many millions of fans across the world, especially in Britain
Now in its 21st series, Grey’s has many millions of fans across the world, especially in Britain. They are enthralled by its depiction of the complicated love lives, and life-or-death professional challenges, faced by surgical interns and their supervisors in a Seattle hospital.
Created by Shonda Rhimes – the powerful Hollywood writer and producer behind other hits including Scandal, Bridgerton and Inventing Anna – Grey’s has had an influence on popular culture, with scriptwriters introducing the term of endearment ‘you’re my person’.
And it continues to capture new fans, partly thanks to this cross-generational appeal. Teenage girls particularly adore it, often watching it with their mothers and older relatives who are similarly captivated by its complex plot lines – some more bizarre than others.
Fans – who call themselves Grey’s Groupies – still discuss episodes about the woman with a 70lb tumour, the patient who was ‘part tree’ and the character who had sex with the ghost of her dead boyfriend. No plot line, though, has yet to rival the bizarre web of lies created by Finch herself.
After her falsehoods were uncovered, the now 46-year-old took a leave of absence in March 2022, before resigning and admitting she had ‘lied about so much’.
Born to middle-class parents in New Jersey in 1978, Finch began her Hollywood career writing for the television shows True Blood and The Vampire Diaries. Her career received a boost in 2014 when, after writing an article in Elle magazine about living with chondrosarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer, she caught the attention of Rhimes, a Hollywood powerhouse.
Elisabeth Finch, left, with wife Jenn Beyer – the couple are now divorcing after Jenn was the first to see through Elisabeth’s duplicity
After her falsehoods were uncovered, the now 46-year-old took a leave of absence in March 2022, before resigning and admitting she had ‘lied about so much’
One can only imagine how intoxicating it must have been for Finch – a fervent Grey’s Anatomy fan with an encyclopedic knowledge of the show – to be hired by Rhimes soon afterwards on the strength of this story which, like so many she told, turned out to be entirely false.
So convincing was Finch that she even became Grey’s self-appointed cancer expert.
In the new documentary, many of Finch’s colleagues recall her wearing that chemo port. Mark Wilding, who worked in the Scandal writers’ room along the corridor from the Grey’s writers’ room, also remembers Finch taking ‘puke breaks’ from her chemo treatment.
‘I’d hear her retching in the bathroom – pretend retching, I would say now. At the time, we all felt sorry for her because she seemed very ill,’ he recalls.
At her 40th birthday party in March 2018, the writer – known as Finchie – made an emotional speech to colleagues, thanking all the people who had encouraged her to ‘help me get to 40’. She also claimed two of her doctors from the world-famous Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, where she said she had received cancer treatment, had flown in to join the celebrations.
However, no one recalled meeting the doctors at the party.
She was even inspired by her own fake cancer diagnosis to write a dramatic storyline called Anybody Have A Map?, in which a character, Catherine Avery, played by US actress and dancer Debbie Allen, was diagnosed with the same type of bone cancer.
Later that year, at the height of the #MeToo movement in which women publicised their experiences of sexual harassment and abuse at the hands of men in the entertainment industry, Finch wrote an article for the Hollywood Reporter in which she claimed she had been pestered and subjected to unwanted touching and verbal abuse by an unnamed director on The Vampire Diaries.
She refused to name the director, while co-workers on set expressed surprise at her claims. Her article has since been removed from the Hollywood Reporter’s website.
The writer then claimed to have become pregnant against the odds and wrote another article in Elle magazine about the dilemma she faced in opting for an abortion in order to continue with her cancer medication.
Eight further articles by her in various publications detailed her cancer battle. In every one she portrayed herself as a plucky and feisty survivor.
But her litany of lies then broadened in scope and imagination.
In October 2018, she claimed to have lost a friend in the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, when 11 congregants were killed in an anti-Semitic terrorist attack. She even told colleagues she had rushed to the city to help clean up body parts, so her friend could be buried according to Jewish tradition.
Today, her colleagues say they had no reason to doubt her. Wilding remembers a conversation they had at a Christmas party in 2018.
Elisabeth was even inspired by her own fake cancer diagnosis to write a dramatic storyline called Anybody Have A Map?, in which a character, Catherine Avery, played by US actress and dancer Debbie Allen (pictured), was diagnosed with the same type of bone cancer
‘I had just been treated for thyroid cancer and she came up to me and said, ‘Mark, I understand you’ve had cancer,’ and I told her it was nowhere near as serious as her cancer. She said, ‘Oh Mark, cancer is cancer’ and I thought at the time that it was a wise thing to say. And, of course, it was all bulls***.’
He says he always thought there was something strange about the Grey’s Anatomy writer.
‘There was something a little off about her, on the edge, intense,’ he recalls. ‘But who is ever suspicious if anyone tells you they have cancer? You take it at face value.’
Finch also used others’ trauma to her own advantage. Fellow scriptwriter Kiley Donovan reveals in the documentary that she confided in Finch that her biological father had raped her mother. Finch then used Donovan’s story without her permission in a 2019 episode called Silent All These Years.
In it, troubled young surgeon Dr Jo Wilson, played by British actress Camilla Luddington, discovers to her horror that she was conceived through rape.
Kiley says in the documentary that, although it was ‘super painful’ for a family secret she was still processing to be used in such a manner, she never confronted Finch because she was a junior writer while Finch was her senior and had received widespread acclaim for the emotional script.
The programme also reveals that, after the synagogue shooting in which she claimed to have a lost a friend, Finch allegedly had a ‘complete breakdown’ and went into a private medical facility in Arizona for treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Bizarrely, she used Jo Wilson, the name of the character she wrote about, as her own name.
On her return to work, Finch wrote another episode called Breathe Again about the character Jo going through treatment at a similar medical facility.
Luddington, who has played the role of Jo on the hit medical drama for 12 of its 21 seasons, has spoken about Finch, saying: ‘It’s scary when someone can lie so easily, so confidently, that you really cannot tell.
‘I did not know. I truly did not know. And I think that kind of throws you . . . because then you feel like your own instinct on stuff is way off. And – this is what I don’t like about it – it makes you start questioning yourself. ‘Why didn’t I see that? How did I believe that?’ And I don’t like this self-doubt.’
After Finch’s return to work from her treatment for PTSD, the writer then claimed to have developed sensitivities to any mention of guns.
‘People weren’t allowed to mention the words guns or shooting in her presence. If someone even came into the writers’ room and said, ‘So and so has shot down that idea’, she’d say ‘Please don’t say shoot! It’s triggering for me.’ All that nonsense,’ says Wilding. As if all this wasn’t enough, Finch made further claims about having a kidney removed.
She also alleged her brother – in reality a successful doctor living in Florida – had abused her during their childhood. Her story went further still: her brother had then tried to commit suicide, but had botched the attempt and she had been forced to pull the plug on his life support.
Neither he nor Finch’s parents have commented on the writer’s downfall. In the end, it was Finch’s wife, Jenn Beyer, who was the first to see through her duplicity.
A former domestic abuse victim and mother of five who had met Finch in the Arizona medical facility, Beyer began to see red flags.
‘I started looking at her Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, comparing her stories to what she’d told me and what she’d posted online,’ Beyer says in the documentary.
‘I was scrolling as far as I could scroll but then, all of a sudden, I find there are posts on the date of the [Tree of Life synagogue] shooting. She’s not in Pittsburgh. She’s at a bar with her friends. She told me she was there. Things aren’t matching up at all. What the hell’s happening?’
Beyer also discovered photographs of Finch wearing the chemo port. As a nurse, she says, she knew there should have been a scar where the port had been – and Finch had no scar.
This was the moment, she says, when she realised Finch had never had cancer.
Eventually, Beyer contacted Shonda Rhimes – who, by now, had left Grey’s after gaining a Netflix deal – to warn her about Finch’s fabrications.
The couple are now in the process of divorcing, according to the documentary.
Following her 2022 resignation from Grey’s, Finch released a statement on Instagram.
‘The truth is, there is no excuse, no justification – nothing will ever make my lies to anyone OK. Nothing erases the trauma I caused – the fear, the pain, the anger, the tears, the time.
‘And nothing matters more to me than holding myself accountable in every way. I will continue to repair whatever damage I can and ensure that I am not the worst things I’ve done.
‘I recognise all of this will take time for people to believe. I will work and wait as long as it takes.’
According to Wilding, Finch reached out to some of the Grey’s writers she worked with to make amends.
‘They all ignored her. She can’t carry on a ruse like that for six or seven years and then expect people to say all’s forgiven,’ he says.
‘People say that surely there were some hints, but these were all smart people she was hoodwinking and they were acting out of compassion.’
As for Finch, it remains a mystery as to why she told such compulsive lies.
In a 2022 interview, she remained adamant that it was a product of her real-life trauma, including the alleged childhood beatings from her brother and a need for attention after knee surgery in 2007. She said: ‘I lied and made something up because I needed support and attention and that’s the way I went after it. That’s where that lie started – in that silence.’
For now, she appears to be seeking public redemption, of a sort perhaps only seen on the kind of television shows she used to write for.
Her last Instagram post at the end of November documented an emotional solo camping trip to Maui, Hawaii, where she said she felt: ‘Grief, joy, remorse, rebuilding, regret, wonder, hope, and peace.’
Finch went on, declaring: ‘I found me again after years – full of love and aware I did my damage. And still worthy.’
Worthy of a sequel, many will surely be wondering?
***
Read more at DailyMail.co.uk