A writer from Grey’s Anatomy who faked having cancer lived a life strewn with lies, and one of them was revealed to have been done for an absolutely shocking reason.
Elisabeth Finch was a writer on Grey’s Anatomy for several years, and lied for much of that period about having a rare form of bone cancer called chondrosarcoma.
She would later write this into a storyline, and in a recent released documentary called Anatomy of Lies, one of her fellow writers on the show says that she became the ‘cancer expert’.
Her lies were exposed when her ex-wife Jennifer Beyer put the pieces together and reported her to the production studio that she worked at.
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She was placed on leave, with The Ankler, a Hollywood newsletter, breaking the story.
Vanity Fair would follow up with a series of articles that detailed the saga.
The lie about her cancer was elaborate, with her wearing a chemo port, shaving her head, and taking regular fake ‘sick breaks’ at work.
This though, was just the tip of the iceberg.
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In a follow up interview with The Ankler, Finch revealed multiple lies alleged in the Vanity Fair report were indeed fake.
This included that she claimed to have had a close friend killed in the Tree of Life synagogue shooting, and that she had to be let through onto the crime scene by the FBI to collect her ‘friend’s’ remains.
Add to that a kidney being given to her by Anna Paquin during her time writing on True Blood (never happened) and her having to have an abortion due to her cancer medication (she never had cancer), and the lies were ruinous and huge.
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One of the worst though, came in the admission that she had once lied about her brother committing suicide.
He was alive and well, and perfectly fine.
In an interview with ex- wife Jennifer though, she reveals the shocking circumstances under which Finch told this lie.
The story was told in the context of Finch beginning to pinch details of Jennifer’s own trauma, such as her abusive ex-husband, and writing it into storylines on Grey’s Anatomy.
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When her abusive ex-husband killed himself, leaving behind the five kids he had with Beyer, Finch rushed to be with her.
Jennifer had not realised however, that the excuse Finch gave work shockingly mirrored her own experience.
Without Beyer’s knowledge, Finch emailed her work saying: “Hey all,
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"I’ve been absent and coming back tomorrow…I just don’t know who’s looped into what and I’d rather put it out there so no one is in the dark or feeling egg-shelly. I’ve gone bc my brother died by suicide. He was on life support for a short while but ultimately did not survive. I say this not bc I need or want anything from anyone, I’m not a delicate flower or whatever, I just want people to know I’m still here, still part of the team. (I intended to just power through my episode shoot, but I recognized I needed to just take a bit of time away to process.) …Missed y’all.
Finchie.”
Reportedly, Finch also claimed to Grey’s Anatomy staff her brother ‘knew exactly how to shoot himself without killing himself’ and did so to make her ‘pull the plug’.
Beyer spoke out against Finch in the documentary series Anatomy of Lies.
Topics: Cancer, True Crime, TV and Film, TV
Michael Slavin