Former Grey’s Anatomy writer Elisabeth Finch has admitted in a new interview that she lied about having cancer after she was accused of spinning false stories about her life and using them as plot lines for the ABC medical drama. Finch, who was placed on administrative leave from the show in March and later resigned, told The Ankler, “What I did was wrong. Not okay. Fucked up.”
Finch confessed to the outlet that she never had “any form of cancer” after previously saying she had battled the rare bone cancer chondrosarcoma, and claiming to have undergone chemotherapy while writing for Grey’s. Finch had also claimed that because of her cancer, she had lost a kidney and had her tibia partially removed, and said she had an abortion because of the chemo treatment.
Along with lying about her health struggles, Finch also told colleagues that her brother had committed suicide, and she claimed to have known a victim of the Tree of Life synagogue shooting. According to The Ankler, Finch did not know any victims, and her brother is alive and working in Florida as a doctor.
“I told a lie when I was 34 years old and it was the biggest mistake of my life,” Finch said. “It just got bigger and bigger and bigger and got buried deeper and deeper inside me.”
While Finch told the Ankler, “there’s no excuse for it,” she added, “there’s context for it.”
“The best way I can explain it is when you experience a level of trauma a lot of people adopt a maladaptive coping mechanism,” she said. “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 said her lying first began in 2007, when she injured herself on a hike and had to undergo multiple surgeries, including a knee-replacement. After experiencing “amazing” and “wonderful” support from her colleagues before the surgeries, Finch said she missed the attention after recovering, when everyone around her went “dead quiet.”
“I had no support and went back to my old maladaptive coping mechanism — I lied and made something up because I needed support and attention and that’s the way I went after it. That’s where that lie started — in that silence,” she told The Ankler.
Finch quit Grey’s months ago after her estranged wife, Jennifer Beyer, realized she’d been making up significant portions of her past, including stories that were pulled from Beyers’ own life. Finch was initially placed on administrative leave as Disney, ABC’s parent company, launched an investigation; she then resigned and attended a treatment center in Arizona.
“You believe this poor woman was going through this awful thing and you want to support her,” one of Finch’s colleagues told The Hollywood Reporter at the time.
