Warning: The following post contains discussions of domestic violence, mental health crises, sexual assault, and suicide.
Since truth is often stranger than fiction, it’s no surprise that writers often rely on the experiences of reality to create their most effective stories. In the case of Elisabeth Finch, though, the fictional elements were posed as part of her life. The Grey’s Anatomy writer and producer was famously outed in a 2022 Vanity Fair article for lying her way to the top of the hit medical drama with a series of increasingly staggering false claims about her health, family, and traumatic experiences, many of which inspired memorable and emotional episodes on the show but didn’t actually happen to her at all.
Peacock’s new three-part docuseries, Anatomy of Lies, sheds new light on the deeply disturbing true story, including testimonials that are heartbreaking and enraging in equal measure. Here are the most unbelievable claims contained in the series.
Her deception first began with her lifelong best friend.
Appearing in Anatomy of Lies is Finch’s childhood friend, Aurora Lee Passin, who grew up with her in Kansas in the ’90s and was also gay. Passin was also the first person to fall victim to Finch’s false claim of having cancer.
She recalled receiving a copy of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, about two terminally ill kids who fall in love, and then being told by Finch she was also diagnosed with terminal cancer. Passin wanted to be there for her friend, so she joined her at the Mayo Clinic for treatments and was stunned when Finch asked her wait outside and further stunned when Finch got angry at her for coming inside.
She took vomit breaks and wore a fake chemo port in the Grey’s writers room.
Finch was unsuccessful in her first few attempts to get a job on Grey’s Anatomy, but after writing a since-unpublished post about how she was inspired by Friday Night Lights‘ “State” to beat the odds in her own case, she got the attention of Shonda Rhimes, who gave her a job on the show. Her fictional cancer diagnosis also apparently saved her from being fired when she was on the chopping block early on in her tenure on the show. She wore a fake chemo port and would take bathroom breaks to vomit in order to support her story. She went on to base the diagnosis of Debbie Allen’s character, Catherine, of chondrosarcoma on her own supposed diagnosis and became friends with the actress, who’d even give her rides to work.
RelatedWho Is Elisabeth Finch? Peacock Docuseries to Delve Into ‘Grey’s’ Writer’s Lies
She claimed to have a kidney transplant from Anna Paquin.
Before Grey’s, Finch had been known for her work on TV vampire dramas like True Blood and The Vampire Diaries and reportedly claimed that Paquin was her close friend and quietly donated a kidney to her, though she didn’t like to talk about it. That was hardly the darkest lie she made up — she also claimed to have cleaned up her friend’s remains after the Tree of Life shooting — but it was one of the most bizarre and brazen.
She stole a particularly harrowing storyline from her coworker.
Kiley Donovan, a former Grey’s Anatomy writer who worked with Finch, claimed that she one divulged a difficult story about her own life — that she was the product of a rape by her biological father against her mother — and then, soon after, Finch wrote a similar storyline for Camilla Luddington‘s Jo Wilson in “Silent All These Years,” which won Finch much acclaim and seniority on the show.
She also echoed an abuse victim’s experiences.
That Jo-centric storyline wasn’t the only one that seemed lifted from the life of someone in Finch’s orbit, either; she also went to a PTSD treatment center — claiming she was triggered by news of shootings due to seeing the aftermath of the Tree of Life attack — and there met Jennifer Beyer, a domestic violence survivor who was very much afraid of her husband, who was stalking and threatening her regularly. Beyer underwent a specific type of treatment for her trauma, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) with a therapist named Carly, and, well, Jo later did the exact same thing on the show. Worse, when Beyer received a threatening message from her ex, Finch, who claimed she was abused by her brother, suddenly got a similarly ominous note from him (that she later admitted to Beyer was written by herself).
She stole her own wife’s experiences.
After Finch and Beyer left their mutual treatment facility, and Beyer resided in a safe house, Finch invited her out to California and they began a romantic relationship. When Beyer learned that her husband died by suicide, Finch told her coworkers that she was attending to her brother, who attempted to die by suicide. She also claimed that he was a doctor and would know how to stage it so she would be implicated, which other writers on the show realized was similar to a storyline of Ellen Pompeo’s Meredith Grey, who famously watched her mother cut her wrists.
Peacock
She caused her stepdaughter to miss her senior year.
During the Covid pandemic, Finch’s new family worked hard to protect her from becoming infected, as they feared her claimed preexisting conditions would make her particularly susceptible to a fatal result from the respiratory illness. Even when the vaccines became available to high-risk patients, like she supposedly was, Finch refused, causing her stepdaughter Maya to skip attending her senior year in person.
She claimed a consultant at Grey’s was someone who misdiagnosed her.
According to a fellow writer on the show, when a doctor came into the writers’ room to consult with them on the show, Finch stormed out crying and didn’t come back, later claiming that he was a doctor who had misdiagnosed her some years before, which she’d publicly claimed. It was not true.
She tried to hide the truth by threatening her ex.
When Beyer finally began to piece together the truth about Finch’s many claims — from finding out she actually had two kidneys from a doctor to seeing pictures of her at costume parties on the day she was supposedly helping with the synagogue cleanup to realizing Finch had no chemo port scar on her chest — she confronted her, and Finch admitted her lies. However, Beyer felt threatened to keep that truth to herself because she feared losing her children over another dissociative episode. Finch showed her text messages of their mutual friends expressing support for her in a divorce and even convinced the therapist to choose her over Beyer. Eventually, Beyer decided not to be silent anymore and sent a letter directly to Rhimes explaining everything and, eventually, decided to speak to Vanity Fair.
If you or someone you know is the victim of domestic abuse, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233.
If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, contact the National Alliance on Mental Illness at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264). If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call 911.
If you or someone you know is the victim of sexual assault, contact the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network‘s National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673). If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call 911.
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or dial 988. If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call 911.
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