Former 'Grey's Anatomy' Writer Elisabeth Finch Was Blacklisted After Her 2022 Cancer Hoax
Finch's lies about her rare bone cancer diagnosis were exposed by her ex-wife, Jennifer Beyer, in 2022.
Published Sept. 19 2024, 4:38 p.m. ET
As Grey's Anatomy continues to break records with 21 seasons and no signs of slowing down, a piece of the ABC show's dark past is being reimagined through a Peacock documentary about the show's former executive producer, Elisabeth Finch.
Finch worked on medical dramas for several seasons and contributed to television shows such as True Blood and The Vampire Diaries. However, in 2022, her reputation was forever changed when she was exposed for lying about a cancer diagnosis that became a Grey's storyline.
Finch's scandal is the subject of Peacock's docuseries Anatomy of Lies, airing on Oct. 15, 2024. The writer isn't involved in the doc and hasn't shared her side of the story much since being dismissed by the TV industry. So, where is Finch now? Here's what we know.
Where is Elisabeth Finch now after being fired from 'Grey's Anatomy?'
Since being fired from Grey's Anatomy, Finch has been reportedly laying low in Florida. She's active on social media accounts like Instagram, but her activity is set to private. In December 2022, she told The Ankler that she had become a pariah in the industry after admitting to lying about her medical history and using fabricated stories for at least one Grey's Anatomy storyline during her time on the show.
"What I did was wrong,” she admitted to the outlet. “Not OK. F----d up. All the words.”
Throughout Finch's time working on Grey's Anatomy, she told stories about her medical history, including a purported diagnosis of chondrosarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer. The disease became the subject of multiple Grey's storylines, including when Dr. Katherine Avery (Debbie Allen) received the same diagnosis and still lived with the disease after going through an invasive surgery.
She also claimed to have had an abortion during a round of chemotherapy, lost a kidney, and undergone a knee replacement, all of which was false. Finch also said she had been treated in a trauma facility to treat abuse she dealt with as a child at the hand of her brother, who she claimed died by suicide in 2019.
While in the facility, the writer met a fellow patient named Jennifer Beyer. The couple married in 2020 and Finch helped Beyer raise her five children. However, by 2022, the relationship turned rocky.
During their marital issues, Beyer emailed Grey's Anatomy creator and EP Shonda Rhimes and informed her that Finch had lied about her medical history and alleged lies. Disney then opened an investigation and put her on administrative leave when she refused to give them her medical history. Finch eventually resigned and hasn't worked on any other television projects since.
"From that point on, I was cut off pretty quickly from everything,” she recanted to The Ankler in 2022. “I slowly started to see people blocking me on Instagram and other social media. It was so universal that I don’t know if an email went out or everyone just got together and decided ‘no thank you.’
Elisabeth described her lying about her medical history and past as "the biggest mistake of my life."
Since the scandal, she's kept herself away from the media as much as possible. Her ex-wife, Beyer, revives the writer's mistakes through the docuseries. Still, Finch has expressed her remorse for the fallacies and seemingly wants to move forward with her life.
"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."
