Warning: The following post contains allegations of sexual assault and child abuse and discussions of suicide.
For years, Elisabeth Finch crafted compelling stories as one of the writers and producers of the hit ABC series Grey’s Anatomy. But she was telling tales off-screen, too, lying to colleagues about having cancer and enduring various other traumas that turned out to be deceptions.
Vanity Fair writer Evgenia Peretz covered Finch’s story in a two-part exposé in May 2022 titled “Scene Stealer: The True Lies of Elisabeth Finch.” Now Peacock is covering the scandal in a three-part docuseries, Anatomy of Lies, with Peretz on board as co-director and executive producer.
So, ahead of that docuseries’ October 15 debut, what do we know about the real Elisabeth Finch?
Mitch Haseth/Disney General Entertainment
As Peretz’s exposé recapped, Finch grew up in New Jersey, moved to California, and eventually got a job as a writer on True Blood. Then came jobs on other shows — including a three-season stint on The Vampire Diaries — before she got a job on Grey’s. She eventually wrote 13 episodes of the medical drama, including “Silent All These Years,” in which she cameoed as one of many Grey Sloan Memorial nurses supporting a sexual assault victim, as seen above.
Along the way, Finch told coworkers she had been diagnosed with chondrosarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer, the same diagnosis Dr. Catherine Avery (Debbie Allen, seen with Finch below) dealt with in another Grey’sepisode Finch wrote. Finch’s colleagues believed her — they said she wore a scarf over her bald head, appeared sickly, had bandages where chemotherapy ports would go, and could be heard retching in the restroom. She also claimed that she had to have an abortion to continue life-saving chemo, and that when she needed a cancer-related kidney transplant, it was True Blood star Anna Paquin who came through.
Richard Cartwright/ABC
Finch had other horrific experiences to share, as relayed in the exposé: She said she was targeted by antisemitic hate in her Santa Monica building. She said a male director of The Vampire Diaries had verbally abused her and touched her without her consent. She said a college friend died in the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooting and that the FBI allowed her to clean up the friend’s remains. And she said that her brother had abused her and then intentionally fumbled a suicide attempt so that she’d have to pull the plug.
Meanwhile, other Grey’s writers gave Finch (pictured with actor Sarah Drew below) special treatment, making sure not to interrupt her in the writers’ room, deferring to her experience for cancer-related storylines, and helping finish her scripts in the multiple times when her illness and mental health breaks coincided with deadlines, even though she hardly returned the favor, according to the Vanity Fair reporting.
Richard Cartwright/ABC
While on a six-week break — which she said she needed for post-Tree of Life PTSD — Finch checked into a mental health clinic in Arizona and met Jennifer Beyer, a registered nurse from Kansas. Beyer was seeking PTSD treatment for the physical, sexual, and psychological emotional abuse she suffered in her marriage. Finch and Beyer bonded as Finch shared alleged experiences with her brother that mirrored Beyer’s experiences with her husband.
The two women fell in love as Finch treated Beyer to all sorts of lavish experiences, including a stay at Paquin’s house in California. Finch told her she owned part of the house, though a source confirmed to Vanity Fair that Paquin neither co-owned the property with Finch nor gave her a kidney.
Even so, Beyer started getting red flags. Once, when Finch claimed to be having excruciating pain, Beyer insisted that Finch go to the hospital, over Finch’s objections. Beyer also told the doctor at the hospital about the medical history Finch had told her, including the part about Finch only having one kidney, after Finch kept mum. One CT scan later, the doctor told Beyer, “Her kidneys look fine.”
But it wasn’t until after Finch and Beyer’s 2020 wedding that Beyer took a deep dive through Finch’s social media history. She saw that Finch was out with friends on the day she was supposedly cleaning up her friend’s body at the Tree of Life synagogue. She saw that Finch had full eyebrows and eyelashes when she was supposedly undergoing chemo. And she saw Finch had poorly applied bandages on sites where Beyer knew Finch didn’t have port scars.
Beyer eventually confronted Finch about her lies, later telling Vanity Fair that Finch emotionlessly admitted to the fabrications and only maintained her allegation about her brother’s abuse. Beyer and Finch split, and Beyer sent Grey’s Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes and then-showrunner Krista Vernoff warnings about Finch’s lies.
(Andrew Brettler, an attorney for Finch, told Vanity Fair that not all Beyer’s claims were true, adding that Beyer was an unreliable and biased source because of her and Finch’s “highly contentious divorce.”)
The scandal spilled out into the public eye in March 2022, when Finch was placed on administrative leave from Grey’s while Disney’s legal and human resources looked into the matter, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Finch took a leave of absence later that month, citing a desire to focus on her family and her health, and hadn’t had a TV credit since, according to her IMDb filmography.
Finch owned up to several lies in an interview with The Ankler, published that December. She said that she never had cancer and shaved her head and applied a fake catheter to her arm to sell the lie to her Grey’s colleagues, that she lied about knowing a Tree of Life victim, and that her brother was alive. But she reiterated her allegations about her brother, who didn’t respond to The Ankler’s request for comment.
“What I did was wrong,” Finch told the publication. “Not okay. F–ked up. All the words. … 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.”
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 someone you know is the victim of child abuse, contact the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child (1-800-422-4453). 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.
Anatomy of Lies, All Episodes, Tuesday, October 15, Peacock
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