‘She preyed upon that empathy’: the TV writer who faked having cancer

Sometimes, truth really is stranger than fiction – even when the fiction is the overwrought drama and bizarre medical mysteries of Grey’s Anatomy. For seven years, Elisabeth Finch, a TV writer with credits on True Blood and The Vampire Diaries, helped craft the credulity-straining and tear-jerking plotlines on the long-running ABC medical soap, with a particular knack for bringing the show into the social media zeitgeist via personal experience. “Finchie,” as she was known in the writers’ room, penned episodes on chondrosarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer she developed in 2012 (and wrote about in essays for Elle, among others); about needing an abortion during cancer treatment (also outlined in a video for NowThis); about sexual assault, which she said happened to her on the Vampire Diaries set (another essay, for the Hollywood Reporter, during the height of #MeToo).

Finch’s penchant for spinning personal trauma into television gold brought industry acclaim, social media clout and a close personal relationship with Grey’s creator Shonda Rhimes – and, seemingly, ever more tragedy. In 2018, Finch abruptly left work to attend to a friend killed in the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh; according to Jewish tradition, she told her colleagues and social media followers, she helped clean his remains off the floor. A year later, she disappeared from work again to pull the plug on her brother’s life support after his suicide attempt – a final act of abusive vindictiveness, she said. And then, in May 2022, the biggest shock of all: a two-part investigation by Vanity Fair journalist Evgenia Peretz that undid all of Finch’s stories. The articles, now adapted into the Peacock docuseries Anatomy of Lies, portrayed Finch as a prolific fabulist mining others’ kindness for attention, sympathy and clout. “She befriended people who are very empathetic, and preyed upon that empathy,” Peretz told the Guardian.

The three-part docuseries unravels an extensive web of deception as hair-raising and brazen as anything on Grey’s Anatomy – and much of it was already on Grey’s Anatomy, either invented by Finch or adapted from someone else’s personal history. As the series underscores via documentation and interviews with several of her friends and former colleagues, Finch never had cancer. She didn’t know anyone at the Tree of Life synagogue, nor did she help in the aftermath of the shooting. Her brother did not die by suicide; in fact, he was a practicing doctor in Florida. The chemo hair loss, the vomiting in the bathroom at work, the port scar she sported on set, the abortion, the stories of beloved doctors at the Mayo Clinic – all fake, and all uncannily effective at amassing power in Hollywood; Finch exited Grey’s Anatomy as a co-producer on a whopping 172 episodes.

At the time, unbeknownst to her Grey’s Anatomy colleagues, Finch was involved in a nasty custody dispute with the woman who finally discovered and outed her lies – her ex-wife, Jennifer Beyer, a registered nurse from Topeka, Kansas. It was Beyer who alerted Rhimes and Grey’s executive producer Krista Vernoff – another friend of Finch’s – about the cancer lie. And it was Beyer who principally outlined Finch’s alleged emotional manipulation – more than one person in Anatomy of Lies refers to her as a “trauma vampire” – in Peretz’s investigation.

After publication, Shondaland and parent company Disney put Finch on administrative leave, and she eventually left the show. But “there was a deeper emotional story to tell”, said Peretz, a co-director on the series with documentarian David Schisgall. “When the piece came out, there were a lot of people on the fence,” said Schisgall. Afterwards, “there were a lot more people who were willing to talk about it.” Still, both Schisgall and Peretz said it was difficult to get people to participate in the series. “A lot of people look at Elizabeth Finch, and they’re like, ‘I’m scared of this person, I don’t know what they’re capable of because this person is not who I thought they were,’” said Peretz. “It took a lot for people to rise above that fear.”

Rhimes, Vernoff and other Shondaland representatives declined to participate in the series. But several Grey’s colleagues, including Andy Reaser, Kiley Donovan and Mark Wilding, explain how they believed Finch’s deceptions over years – partly out of deference to Beyer, whom Finch branded as mentally unstable and a liar, and her five children, whom Finch co-parented for a period of time. The two first met at an in-patient psychiatric facility in Arizona in 2019. Beyer was reeling from alleged physical and emotional abuse by her ex-husband, recovering from a dissociative episode and fighting to regain custody of her kids. Finch – checked in as “Jo,” the name of her preferred Grey’s character – told her coworkers she needed time to heal from the loss of her friend at the Tree of Life synagogue, and told Beyer that she had PTSD from actually witnessing the shooting.

Beyer, as the series’s chief witness, along with her two oldest children, Maya and Van, warmly recounts how Finch barreled into her life, seeming to mirror her pain. Beyer was being harassed by her ex-husband; Finch said her brother, Eric, had long abused her and was threatening her. Shortly after Beyer’s release, her ex-husband killed himself, throwing a new wrench into her custody struggle. Finch, who falsely told her co-workers that the suicide was her brother’s, flew out to Kansas to be with Beyer, precipitating a virtual takeover of Beyer’s life – her friends, her kids, even her therapist.

When Peretz first met Beyer, in 2022, she was shattered from Finch’s serial lies and threats to take custody of her children. “She couldn’t make eye contact. She was extremely fragile. She wasn’t sure that people were going to believe her. A lot of people in her world still didn’t believe her,” said Peretz. But Beyers had meticulously documented her days with Finch via photo and video, a habit developed via earlier custody battles. The evidence, along with her own testimony, proved cathartic. “She’s now in a very strong place,” said Peretz. “And watching and being a small part of that transformation was definitely the most gratifying part of this making this show.”

As with the initial articles, Finch declined to participate. Her only statement on the matter remains a December 2022 interview with Hollywood newsletter the Ankler, titled “The ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Liar Confesses it All” in which she admitted lying about cancer (though, as Peretz noted, “it’s not really a confessional if you’ve already been caught.”) Finch framed her lies as a maladaptive coping mechanism to childhood abuse at the hands of her brother, for which she offered no evidence. (Finch’s parents and brother have declined all media requests; according to Peretz, “as far as our reporting went, there was no trauma from childhood that would have explained this.”) And she pitched herself as a writer who was “going to work my fucking ass off because this is where I want to be and I know what it’s like to lose everything”.

“It was very clear to me that she did this interview just to get back into Hollywood and to spin a new story,” said Peretz. The series otherwise avoids trying to pathologize or diagnose the psychology of this specific fabulist. “We were very cognizant of the fact that we’re not doctors, we didn’t meet her,” said Peretz. Whether for love, attention, power, validation or a particularly cutthroat version of the righteous victim posturing many assume on social media, the damage is the same – and for some, like Beyer, healed through sharing her side of the story.

“A lot of people are betrayed by people they think they love and who love them,” said Schisgall, noting the shame around feeling conned, particularly though one’s generosity. The hope for the series, he added, is that those preyed on for their empathy “feel seen by seeing these other people who’ve been through it, and who are processing it”.