ABC/Courtesy Everett Collection
Truth is stranger than fiction.
The new three-episode Peacock docuseries “Anatomy of Lies” (now streaming) covers the unbelievable story of former “Grey’s Anatomy” writer Elisabeth Finch, who wove a web of lies more dramatic than anything Patrick Dempsey, Sandra Oh or Ellen Pompeo played on-screen.
As the documentary covers, Finch — who worked on the show from 2014 to 2022 as both a writer and a producer — fabricated a cancer diagnosis, lied about her brother dying by suicide, claimed that Oscar-winning actress Anna Paquin secretly gave her a kidney, and more.
Vanity Fair first broke the story in 2022. Following that initial report, Finch was put on leave from the show, as Disney Television Studios launched an investigation. She resigned from the job that same year.
At the time, Finch’s attorney, Andrew B. Brettler, issued a statement on her behalf to People. “Ms. Finch is not going to discuss her private health matters. Likewise, she will not speak about her pending divorce from her estranged wife, Jennifer Beyer, or comment on any statements that Ms. Beyer may have made to third parties about Ms. Finch,” he said.
“Grey’s Anatomy” is the longest running scripted primetime series on ABC, currently still on the air after 21 seasons.
The network TV staple features a mix of medical puzzle-solving and romance involving series regulars like Meredith (Pompeo), Derek (Dempsey), Callie (Sara Ramirez), Arizona (Jessica Capshaw), Mark (Eric Dane) and Lexie (Chyler Leigh).
Here are some of the bombshells revealed in “Anatomy of Lies”:
She faked having cancer
Elisabeth Finch was previously a writer for “The Vampire Diaries” and “True Blood.” In 2014, she wrote an Elle magazine article about having chondrosarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer. Shonda Rhimes hired her shortly thereafter.
The doc reveals that at one point the show’s producers considered letting her go. However, network executives told them, states former “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Scandal” writer Mark Wilding in the docuseries, that “You can’t fire Finchy. Finchy has cancer. She has to stay on the show.”
Another former writer for “Grey’s Anatomy,” Andy Reaser, recalled that Finch took breaks to “puke” due to her supposed cancer. “Finch was taking breaks to go to the bathroom and throw up from the chemo, and it started to really feel like I’m going to attend this person’s funeral, but my sense that I got from her is that she didn’t want to confide in people about her cancer.”
Finch became the “cancer expert” in the show’s writers room, former writers recalled.
“I’ve never had any form of cancer,” she later admitted to the Ankler in a 2022 interview.
“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,” she added.
Her estranged wife, Jenn Beyer, recalled in the doc that when she confronted Finch, “She took a deep breath, and said ‘I did have cancer, but I don’t have any more.’ She just kept [the] story going, and I just kept repeating, like, ‘You don’t have cancer.’ She finally said, ‘Yes, I’ve been untruthful.’”
Beyer recalled that when Finch admitted to lying about having cancer, she showed “no emotion, no fear.”
She allegedly lied that Anna Paquin gave her a kidney
Finch and her estranged wife, Jenn Beyer, got engaged in November 2019, after they met at a mental health facility in Arizona. One month later, Beyer said, “She was complaining that she knew she had a kidney stone because she’d had him before, and that’s a big concern, because she had told me she only had one functioning kidney because chemotherapy had destroyed the other.”
But, Beyer claimed, she later learned that Finch had both kidneys.
“When I first started working with Finch, I heard through the cloud of rumors that she lost a kidney because of the chemo, and her good friend, Anna Paquin, is giving her a kidney,” former “Grey’s Anatomy” writer Kiley Donovan recalled, adding she remembered thinking she had no idea that Finch and the “True Blood” star were that close.
Wilding said, “Finchy hinted very strongly that Anna Paquin didn’t want anyone else to know about it. When she went to get her surgery, Finchy had a friend texting people at ‘Grey’s’ about how the surgery was going, on Finchy’s phone.”
He recalled that the writers all heard the operation was “very touch and go,” to the point where he heard that “Shonda [Rhimes] was crying the night of the operation because she felt that Finch might die.”
Allegedly stole a colleague’s painful story without permission
According to Donovan, she confided in Finch about being conceived when her biological father raped her mother. After hearing this painful personal story, Donovan claims, Finch used it for the 2019 “Grey’s Anatomy” episode “Silent All These Years” in which Jo Wilson (Camilla Luddington) treats a patient with the same backstory.
“And just even hearing that story, I have not even told this story myself, and I’m a writer. Like, I haven’t even had the chance to figure out if I want to tell this story,” said Donovan.
She added, “It just felt really felt weird and wrong, and I never confronted Finch about it, because it felt like I was a lower-level writer, and she was a co-executive producer and was being heralded for this amazing script, and it didn’t feel like I had a leg to stand on.”
Finch allegedly lied about her connection to a shooting
After the tragic October 2018 shooting at Pittsburgh synagogue Tree of Life, Finch allegedly claimed to know members of the congregation, and to have visited very soon after the shooting.
“We found that Finch had gone to that synagogue in the past and knew some of the people who were murdered,” Reaser said.
In the doc, Wilding said, “I remember talking to Andy Reaser, and I said, ‘Do you understand how odd that sounds? The fact that she had to go in, you know, scoop up her friends’ brains?’ I mean, that’s pretty heavy duty. Also, the FBI is there. It’s a crime scene. And he said, ‘You know, I’m a Christian, and I don’t necessarily know all the tenets of the Jewish faith.’ I certainly didn’t think to question her.”
When Beyer became suspicious about her wife’s dramatic claims, she looked at Finch’s social media. Beyer said, “I find there’s posts the date of the [Tree of Life Synagogue] shooting. She’s not in Pittsburgh. She’s at a bar with her friends. She told me she was there. Things aren’t matching up at all. What the hell is happening?”
Finch claimed her brother died by suicide when he was alive
In September 2019, Finch’s wife, Beyer, found out that her estranged husband had died by suicide. Finch then allegedly told an altered version of the story to her “Grey’s Anatomy” colleagues in which her brother Eric had attempted suicide. She later claimed he had died, and that his note implicated Finch in his reasons for taking his own life.
“It was such a dramatic story that it could have come straight out of ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’” said Donovan. “And in fact, we did do an episode many years ago where Meredith recalled her mother’s attempted suicide under very similar circumstances.”
Eric Finch is alive and is a doctor in Florida.
The Post has reached out to ABC and Brettler for comment on the new docuseries.
“Anatomy of Lies” is now streaming on Peacock.