In a shocking interview with The Ankler, the Grey’s Anatomy writer said that she made everything up, including the allegations that she faked a cancer diagnosis and made up stories about abortion and family suicide to serve as inspiration for episodes of the show.
Elisabeth Finch acknowledged that she “f****d up” in the interview with writer Peter Kiefer, who broke the story of her lying for The Ankler.
Jennifer Beyer, Finch’s former wife, learned that Finch had been fabricating a large amount of her background, including tales drawn from Beyers’ own life, after Finch had already left Grey’s several months before.
Finch quit her job and checked into a treatment facility in Arizona after being first placed on administrative leave while Disney, ABC’s parent company, started an inquiry.
According to one of Finch’s coworkers at the time, “you believe this poor woman was going through this horrific tragedy and you want to help her.”
When Beyer, a registered nurse she met in 2019, discovered Finch’s lies, Finch was under investigation, and Beyer revealed the truth to her employers after Finch refused to tell the truth.
After being charged with fabricating stories about her life to use as the basis for the ABC medical show Grey’s Anatomy, former writer Elisabeth Finch has acknowledged in a new interview that she lied about having cancer.
“What I did was terrible,” Finch, who was put on administrative leave from the program in March and ultimately quit, told The Ankler. ‘Not good. I messed up.’
After claiming to have battled the uncommon bone cancer chondrosarcoma and had chemotherapy while writing for Grey’s, Finch admitted to the outlet that she never had any cancer.
In addition, Finch claimed that her cancer had caused her to lose a kidney, have part of her tibia removed, and have an abortion as a result of chemotherapy.
In addition to lying to her coworkers about her health issues, Finch reportedly said that her brother had committed suicide and that she knew a victim of the shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue.
The Ankler claims that Finch had no acquaintance with any of the victims and that her brother is still alive and employed as a doctor in Florida.
‘The biggest mistake of my life was a falsehood I told when I was 34 years old,’ Finch claimed. ‘It only became larger and larger and larger as it buried itself deeper and deeper inside of me.’
Finch said no justification for that to the Ankler, but she also said, ‘There is the context behind it.’
‘The best way I can explain it is that a lot of people adopt a maladaptive coping mechanism when they encounter a level of trauma,’ she added. ‘Some people use alcohol to cover up or forget things. Drug users attempt to change their world. Certain individuals cut. I lied.’
That was how I dealt with things and found safety, acceptance, and voice.
Finch claimed that she started lying back in 2007 after getting hurt while hiking and needing many surgeries, including a knee replacement.
Before the procedures, her coworkers provided fantastic support, but Finch said she missed the attention after healing when everyone went dead quiet.
“I had no support, so I reverted to my old maladaptive coping strategy. I made up a story and lied to get the support and attention I craved. In that quiet is where the deception began,’ she told The Ankler.
