‘Grey’s Anatomy’ writer who lied about having cancer is subject of Peacock docuseries
The truth will come out.
Peacock is releasing a docuseries on disgraced “Grey’s Anatomy” writer Elisabeth Finch, detailing the outlandish lies she told about her medical and personal history — including that she had cancer — all in an effort to get ahead in Hollywood.
The streamer debuted a teaser trailer Tuesday about the three-part series “Anatomy of Lies.” The program will reportedly feature interviews with some of those closest to Finch.
“The docuseries reveals how Finch, a master of manipulation, saved her best fiction for her own life story and exploited the empathy of those around her,” said a press release.
“Her final mark was trauma survivor Jennifer Beyer, who entrusted Finch with her deepest secrets. But as Beyer uncovers the web of lies that deceived Hollywood for years, she faces a daunting challenge: Can she reclaim the narrative from a convincing storyteller who showed no signs of stopping?”
Beyer and Finch married in 2020.
Finch came aboard “Grey’s Anatomy” as a staff writer in 2014. Before being called out by a 2022 Vanity Fair expose, the scribe claimed she survived a rare form of bone cancer, had a friend who died in the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooting, suffered the loss of a kidney and part of her leg, was a survivor of sexual assault and endured abuse by a male director while she was a writer on “The Vampire Diaries.”
After the Vanity Fair story broke, Disney put Finch on “administrative leave” from the long-running ABC medical drama pending an HR investigation. She went on to resign her post and later fessed up to her lies, admitting she “never had any form of cancer” while speaking with the Ankler in 2022.
“It just got bigger and bigger and bigger and got buried deeper and deeper inside me,” she told the outlet. “I know it’s absolutely wrong what I did. I lied and there’s no excuse for it.”
When trying to explain why she wove a web of so many lies, Finch said, “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,” she added. “I lied. That was my coping and my way to feel safe and seen and heard.
“I wish I had a grid that would show who’s not talking to me because they can’t [legally],” she went on. “Who’s not talking to me because they don’t know what to say. Who’s not talking to me because they’re pissed off.”
After the Vanity Fair expose was released, Finch also said that some people she knew “were immediately very, very nasty on text.”
“Family and friends who called me ‘a monster’ and ‘a fraud’ and said that’s all I’ll ever be known for and soon, more truth would come out,” she recalled.
Finch does not appear to have taken part in the docuseries.
All three episodes of “Anatomy of Lies” drop Oct. 15 on Peacock.