For years, lesbian TV screenwriter Elisabeth Finch told her wife, friends, and co-workers that she had chondrosarcoma, a rare cancer. The cancer, she said, required chemotherapy which forced her to have an abortion, and later resulted in her developing a spinal tumor and losing a kidney.
Her employers at the TV medical drama Grey’s Anatomy granted her deadline extensions and medical leaves. She wrote about her experience for publications like Elle and The Hollywood Reporter. She also asked loved ones for gifts and favors from her favorite celebrities to help her feel better — Finch has since admitted it was all lies.
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On Tuesday, she issued a public apology to coincide with the release of a three-part Peacock docuseries, Anatomy Of Lies, which is based on a Vanity Fair article outlining her deceptions and its effect on her family, friends, colleagues, and now ex-wife. Some have disowned her and others have pledged never to forgive her.
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To aid her deceptions, Finch taped a fake catheter to her arm and shaved her hair to make it seem like she was undergoing chemotherapy.
After the October 2018 shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylania, Finch said she had to secure FBI permission to collect her friend’s remains so they could be buried within 24 hours, in accordance with Jewish tradition — that too was a lie.
In spring 2019, she said post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from the shooting’s aftermath compelled her to check into an Arizona mental health clinic. There, she met a nurse named Jennifer Beyer, who had five kids, had recently left an abusive marriage to a man and was recovering from PTSD.
They married in February 2020, but Beyer began suspecting that Finch had lied about her past after she refused to answer questions. Beyer filed for divorce on November 9, 2021, and then contacted Finch’s employer to whistleblow about her deceptions.
By March 2022, her employers began investigating her claims and placed her on a leave of absence. She refused to give medical documentation or allow an independent medical evaluation and resigned from the job that same month.
By December 2022, Finch admitted to The Ankler, “I’ve never had any form of cancer,” adding, “What I did was wrong. Not okay. F***ed 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.”
“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.”
Elisabeth Finch
Her lies began when she injured her knee during a hike amid the 2007 Writers Strike, requiring knee replacement surgery. She received lots of support during the recovery period, but once she recovered, she craved more support and attention, so she began lying for it, she said.
“I know it’s absolutely wrong what I did. I lied and there’s no excuse for it,” she told The Ankler. “The best way I can explain it is when you experience a level of trauma a lot of people adopt a maladaptive coping mechanism. Some people drink to hide or forget things. Drug addicts try to alter their reality. Some people cut. I lied. That was my coping and my way to feel safe and seen and heard.”
On Tuesday, she released a public apology via Instagram, which began, “I’ve given no one any reason to believe a word I say. I lied about so much; things so many people have been devastated by in real life. ‘I’m sorry’ feels like the smallest words compared to what I’ve done, yet they are the truest.”
She said she has tried to make amends to those who closest to her, including her ex-wife, but added, “The truth is, there is no excuse, no justification, nothing will ever make my lies to anyone okay. 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 I am not the worst things I’ve done. I recognize all of this will take time for people to believe. I will work and wait as long as it takes.”
On the same day she issued her public apology, Peacock released its three-part docuseries on her deceptions entitled, Anatomy of Lies. It is based on a three-part investigative article published in Vanity Fair and written by Evgenia Peretz.
The series talks with Beyer and Finch’s friends and coworkers about the effects of her deceptions on their lives. One of Finch’s former professional colleagues, Carina Adly MacKenzie, said she has lost all empathy for Finch.
“[We] were not stupid,” Finch wrote on X, responding to commenters who mocked Finch’s associates for believing her lies. “We saw a visibly ill person. Her skin was green. Her teeth were deteriorating. She walked with a cane and was bald when I met her elderly parents—why would I, a normal person, think she was lying to her PARENTS??”
MacKenzie, who worked on a spin-off to the supernatural drama series The Vampire Diaries where Finch served as a writer, said that Finch refused to play the pitiable victim and made her friends “beg” for information and ways to help, “Literally TRAINING us all to wrap her in empathy and sympathy and PRIDE.”
“We were so proud of her strength, we all felt so weak in comparison,” MacKenzie added. “So this idea that she told one oopsie lie and it just snowballed — got out of her control, she couldn’t stop it, she’s so sorry, she wants to atone—NO. She was diabolical from the jump, and we were primed for empathy because EMPATHY IS REQUIRED in a writers’ room.”
“The doc [series trailer] says ‘she was brilliant.’ No. We were not stupid—but she was NOT brilliant. She was a specific predator & we were a specific prey. A lion isn’t a genius for catching a zebra. She was a lion let into the f**king zebra pen. Because her feet were already. in. the door,” MacKenzie wrote.
She added, “[Finch] sat on panels at TV festivals about disability representation in TV writing — while actively stealing a job from someone that could actually speak to that lived experience.”
She then posted a screenshot of an email that Finch sent her, asking for a chance to make amends. “My empathy reserve has run dry, I’m fresh out, go f**k yourself,” MacKenzie wrote in response on X.
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