Grey's Anatomy writer admits she never had cancer
Follow up to these posts
Last year, Vanity Fair did a two part story about Grey's Anatomy writer Elisabeth Finch who had been placed on administrative leave while HR conducted an investigation. Finch claimed to have chondrosarcoma, a rare and usually fatal form of bone cancer (this is what Catherine's cancer storyline is based on). She said she was the only one in her clinical trial who had survived. She shaved her head and wore a bandage on her chest where her chemo port would have been. When her family and friends tried to be supportive by coming to LA, speaking to her doctors (her brother is a doctor), or keeping her company during treatment, she declined (she would let her friends drop her off but not come in with her).
In case you need a refresher, here's a summary of shitty things she did/long list of other things she lied about:
She wrote numerous essays about her cancer journey (she had extensive knowledge about cancer because her mother was diagnosed when she was in college, her first boss's mom had lung cancer, and the boss's friend's wife had breast cancer), including a 2014 article in Elle, which is how Shonda Rhimes discovered her and hired her as a writer for Grey's Anatomy. When cancer storylines were included on the show, other writers said she took over the conversation and other cancer survivors felt they could not speak up. She would take weeks off at a time claiming that she was undergoing treatment. She would not meet deadlines and claim it was because of her illness and then have other writers finish her work.
In 2017, she claimed that she lost a kidney due to chemotherapy and needed a kidney transplant. She later said Anna Paquin (who she met and became friends with when she worked on True Blood from 2008 until 2010) was the one to thank. Anna Paquin declined to comment but a source confirmed to Vanity Fair that she had nothing to do with Finch's alleged kidney transplant). She also said that part of her tibia had to be removed because of her cancer. She claimed that she had to have an abortion because she was undergoing chemotherapy. During Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings, she made a video for NowThis claiming she had a medically necessary abortion due to her cancer.
In 2018, eleven people were killed in a synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh. Finch claimed that one of the victims was a close friend she had met when she attended Carnegie Mellon. She told people that she had to clean this friend's body parts off the floor of the synagogue. Vanity Fair confirmed that she did not do this. Whenever a subsequent shooting occurred, she would bring up her experience cleaning her college friend's body parts up. She later claimed she had PTSD and told people in the writers' room that they had to be sensitive about this, dramatically wincing when people said their ideas got "shot down."
Her alleged PTSD got so bad that in 2019, she took six weeks off from work and checked into a mental health clinic, which is where she met her future wife Jennifer (they married in 2020) who was at the clinic due to PTSD from her ex-husband Brendan's abuse. She then began using Jennifer's trauma as her own, claiming that her brother Eric had abused her. When Jennifer began receiving threats from Brendan, Finch began claiming that her brother Eric was threatening her.
After Jennifer and Finch left the clinic in July 2019, Finch love bombed Jennifer, paid for her to get a service dog for her PTSD, and invited her to stay with her in Ojai at Anna Paquin's home (which Finch claimed she co-owned). Finch flew out to Kansas to accompany Jennifer to her court appearances (to deal with her ex Brendan).
In September 2019, Brendan died by suicide. Finch told everyone at Grey's Anatomy that her brother Eric had attempted suicide. She then elaborated, saying that because he was a doctor, he knew how to shoot himself without actually killing himself, forcing her to travel to Florida to pull the plug on him in his final act of cruelty. Next she told the GA staff that she was flying to Hawaii to meet her dead brother's illegitimate baby. In actuality, she took Jennifer on vacation in Hawaii. But Finch did not tell Jennifer the lie about Eric's attempted suicide. When Jennifer arrived at Finch's LA apartment and found it littered with empty alcohol bottles, Finch claimed Eric must have broken in and trashed her place. Later Finch told Jennifer that Eric was not a threat to their safety because he had gone to the Philippines and he could not return to the United States without her being notified due to a legal order.
On Thanksgiving, Finch proposed to Jennifer. A few weeks later, Finch claimed she was in excruciating pain during a party to celebrate Jennifer's son's dance recital. Jennifer insisted that Finch go to the hospital. While meeting with the doctor, Finch did not mention having cancer so Jennifer brought it up and told the doctor that Finch had only one working kidney. After running some tests, the doctor said that both of her kidneys looked fine. After they left, Finch dismissed the doctor's use of the plural by saying he didn't care about her pain.
Finch and Jennifer got married in February 2020. When COVID arrived, Jennifer's children worried about protecting Finch due to her cancer. The Grey's Anatomy producers talked about getting a hotel room for Finch so that she wouldn't be exposed to the kids' potential COVID cooties. Finch told the Grey's Anatomy staff that the anniversary of her brother's suicide was so traumatic that she would not be able to meet her deadlines. In the midst of the George Floyd protests, she reverted to bringing up her PTSD about her college friend's death at the synagogue. She claimed everything from rain, loud sounds during a movie, and even a dreamcatcher were triggering to her.
At this point, Jennifer was suspicious so she started looking at Finch's Facebook history. She scrolled back to the day that the synagogue shooting took place. Finch's post that day showed she had been out with a friend. The next day (when she was supposedly cleaning her friend's body off the synagogue floor), she was out with friends again. Jennifer saw the picture of Finch with a bandage over her port, but she knew that Finch had no scar there so she confronted her. Finch claimed that she'd had cancer once and recovered after chemo. She said she loved the attention so she pretended she still had it. Jennifer asked why there was no scar where her port had supposedly been. She then confronted her about other specific things like the synagogue shooting, the threatening letter from Eric, and imitating Jennifer's trauma. Finch admitted to to those lies but blamed it on her brother's abuse.
They confided the truth to some of Jennifer's friends who didn't seem overly concerned about all the lying because they saw Finch as Jennifer's savior. Jennifer needed support so she contacted Carly, her therapist from the clinic, which was when she learned that Finch had already hired Carly as her own therapist.
Jennifer and Finch went to a weeklong marriage therapy intensive in an attempt to save their relationship. Jennifer insisted that Finch had to come clean about everything to their friends and her family. Finch agreed but put it off for months until Jennifer forced her to do it. When she confessed to her parents, they said she needed to make things right with her brother. She still would not tell the truth to her coworkers though. When Jennifer continued to pressure her to tell the Gray's Anatomy staff the truth, Finch said she was going to divorce her. Jennifer asked that she tell the kids the truth before leaving.
Months later, someone who knew Finch forwarded a copy of the email she had sent to the GA staff about her brother's suicide. Jennifer realized Finch had lied about that too. She emailed Shonda Rhimes but never got a response. Next she texted GA showrunner Krista Vernoff. After that, Disney HR contacted Jennifer. Finch resigned but made sure to announce it in a cheery fashion that made it sound like it was her choice:
“‘Grey’s Anatomy’ is one big-hearted, brilliant family. As hard as it is to take some time away right now, I know it is more important that I focus on my own family and my health. I’m immensely grateful to Disney, ABC, and Shondaland for allowing me to do so and for supporting me through this very difficult time.”
In her first interview since the shit hit the fan, Finch admits that she has never had any form of cancer and that what she did was "fucked up" (her exact words). She claims that there are two reasons she lied:
(1) She injured her knee while hiking in 2007 which resulted in multiple surgeries and ultimately having knee replacement surgery. After she recovered, she missed all the attention and support she received from her friends so she started making things up to get support and attention again.
(2) She still claims that her brother physically and emotionally abused her and that her parents "weren't listening" (she never says in this interview that she told them about the abuse). She says that that the loneliness after her knee surgery triggered the trauma she suffered from her brother's abuse.
One colleague said there was always some kind of tragedy or hardship in Finch's life. In addition to the cancer/kidney/abortion and the synagogue tragedy and her brother's abuse, she told people that a Gulf War vet stalked her for months, slashed her tires, and left a knife in her apartment door. Another time she said she'd been a victim of road rage, culminating in the other driver catching up with her at a red light, exposing himself, and masturbating in front of her. She also said an antisemitic flyer was put under her front door. In the wake of the #MeToo movement, Finch wrote an essay claiming that a male director had verbally abused her when she worked on The Vampire Diaries (Julie Plec declined to comment).
Finch says, “I know it’s absolutely wrong what I did. I lied and there’s no excuse for it. But 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. 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.”
“There’s a momentum that grows. Why do alcoholics keep drinking? Why do addicts keep using more and more? I think it was a lie that got completely out of control and I got out of control with it. I wasn’t some calculating puppet master trying to buck the system. I think it was something that got really freaking out of control and that’s what happens when you’re dealing with a maladaptive way of dealing with things. It just gets bigger.”
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