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How ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ author Elisabeth Finch faked cancer and deceived friends

How ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ author Elisabeth Finch faked cancer and deceived friends

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Liar, liar, the world is burning.

Television writer Elisabeth Finch did not limit her imaginative fiction to her scripts. In Peacock’s “Anatomy of Lies” (now streaming), the bold storyteller sensed dramatic intrigue to intensify her personal life, which she portrayed as truth. The three-part documentary is produced by Vanity Fair Studios and is based on the magazine’s 2022 exposé.

Finch cut his teeth on HBO’s “True Blood” in 2009 and wrote for CW’s “The Vampire Diaries” from 2012 to 2014. Then she landed her dream job on ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy,” thanks to an essay she wrote for Elle in 2014 about her diagnosis of a rare and sometimes fatal bone cancer, chondrosarcoma. (It’s the same cancer that Catherine Avery, Debbie Allen’s character, had at Finch’s suggestion in Season 15 of Grey’s.)

Luckily for Finch, she had no illness at all. From 2014 to 2022 she wrote 13 episodes and produced 172 of them.

She made up big lies, like the fake cancer diagnosis; ones that were unforgivable, including an allegation that she helped clear the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh of human remains after a 2018 shooting; and others that were simply bizarre, including the fact that Anna Paquin had given her a kidney.

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The most shocking revelations are brought to light by Finch’s ex-wife, Jennifer Beyer. The two married in 2020 and separated the following year.

“I don’t know who my wife is,” Beyer vividly recalls in the docuseries after discovering she was a victim in Finch’s web of deception.

Here are the most shocking moments from Anatomy of Lies.

How did Elisabeth Finch fake cancer?

Finch took many steps to pull off her cancer scam. She applied bandages to her chest to mimic a chemotherapy treatment, former “Grey’s” writer Kiley Donovan says in the docuseries.

Andy Reaser, another of Finch’s former colleagues, says Finch would wrap her head in a scarf to hide alleged hair loss from chemotherapy treatments. He says that after the treatment, Finch excused himself to go to the bathroom to throw up and that he was deceived: “It felt like I was attending this person’s funeral.”

What did Elisabeth Finch say about the Tree of Life synagogue shooting?

After learning of the attack on October 27, 2018, Finch hurriedly left work and texted her Grey’s colleagues that she was heading to Pittsburgh. Finch, who claims to have attended services at the synagogue, claimed to have known some of the 11 victims.

Reaser believed Finch helped by staying there and collecting remains.

Finch tweeted: “I spent sun up to sun down cleaning up my friend’s remains after the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting.”

Donovan says that Finch has always strived for relevance: “What struck me was that whenever something was talked about in the zeitgeist or in the news, Finch always seemed to have a connection to it or to her own personal experience or story.” She claimed, She had an abortion while undergoing chemotherapy so that she would not have to interrupt her treatments. “It felt like abortion was another issue on Finch’s mind,” Donovan says.

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How did Elisabeth Finch get caught?

In May 2019, Finch sought treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) at a wellness facility under the pseudonym Jo, a character she wrote for on the series. There, Finch met Beyer, a nurse who checked herself into the center to process her own trauma. The father of Beyer’s five children physically and emotionally abused and stalked them. (When he died by suicide, Finch took over the story and told her colleagues that it was her brother who shot himself. Finch said she had to make the decision to take him off life support.)

Months after their wedding in 2020, Beyer noticed a disturbing pattern.

“It’s like other people get attention, so Finch gets triggered,” Beyer says. “She needs the attention that is being given to her. She needs the care.”

Beyer also noticed inconsistencies in Finch’s stories, which she attempted to verify using Finch’s social media. Although Beyer says Finch told her she was at the synagogue in Pittsburgh on the day of the shooting, she was pictured celebrating with friends in a Halloween costume. Beyer also recognized that Finch had no connection to her cancer treatment or any remaining scar.

“The reality of my story became clear to me,” says Beyer. “I met a woman in a psychiatric hospital. I let her into my house. I let them into my children’s lives. She lied to me and I had no idea whatsoever.’”

Beyer says that when she confronted Finch, the author again tried to lie her way out of it by claiming she once had cancer. Then she finally admitted that she had been “untruthful” with “no emotion, no fear,” Beyer notes. Finch also admitted that she was not at the synagogue when Beyer confronted her with evidence.

Because she felt that Grey’s Anatomy co-creator Shonda Rhimes deserved to know the truth, Beyer wrote an email informing Rhimes of Finch’s deceptions. Following his leave of absence, Finch stepped down from the series in 2022.

What did Elizabeth Finch say?

Beyer says in the docuseries that Finch attributed her lies to an incessant need for attention.

Journalist Peter Kiefer from The Ankler. In a letter following his conversations with Finch in 2022, she said she was “firmly convinced that her compulsive lying was entirely a product of her real-life trauma: the allegations that her brother had beaten her in her childhood, triggered by the silence and the loneliness that followed later.” her knee operation at the age of 34.

“It was an incredible recovery period, and then it was dead quiet because of course everyone was like, ‘Yay!’ “You’re healed,” Kiefer says Finch told him. “But it was dead quiet. And I had no support and went back to my old maladaptive coping mechanism – I lied and made things up because I needed support and attention, and so I moved on. That’s where this lie began – in that silence.”

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