Elisabeth Finch, a former writer for the ABC hit drama series “Grey’s Anatomy,” admitted on Wednesday to lying about having bone cancer, among several other false claims.
In March, The Ankler released a story detailing Finch’s elaborate lies, prompting an investigation by Disney into her behavior. Her wife, Jennifer Beyer, was the first to discover her lies and urged her to come clean to her friends and family.
Finch resigned at the start of the investigation and checked herself into a mental health facility in Arizona. She admitted to all of her fabrications to The Ankler.
Things began after Finch lied about being diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer in 2012, which she claimed also resulted in both the loss of a kidney and a tibia bone and forced her to have an abortion. She later went on to claim that she also lost a close friend in a 2018 synagogue attack in Pittsburgh, which saw 11 deaths. In 2019, she lied about her brother committing suicide, which involved her sending a letter to colleagues that said she had been absent due to her brother’s death when he was actually alive and well in Florida.
“I know it’s absolutely wrong what I did,” Finch said in the interview. “I lied and there’s no excuse for it.”
“But there’s context for it,” she continued. “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.”
Finch had been a writer on The CW’s “The Vampire Diaries” prior to her stint writing for “Grey’s Anatomy” in 2014. Her medical ailment reportedly inspired characters and plotlines throughout the series. During the same time, she chronicled her ailments and work in the industry in several publications including Elle and the Hollywood Reporter.
Since news broke of Finch’s ruse, her wife has filed for divorce, much of her family has disowned her and the entertainment industry has rejected her, according to The Ankler.
“I really miss it. I miss my fellow writers,” Finch said of her former job. “It’s like a family and… one of the things that makes it so hard is that they did rally around a false narrative that I gave.”
Finch said she lied because she “needed support and attention and that’s the way I went after it.”
