How Grey’s Anatomy Writer Elisabeth Finch Faked Her Brother’s Cancer and Suicide, Until One Key Mistake Surprised Her

FROM pretending she had cancer to claiming her brother took his own life, screenwriter Elisabeth Finch even wrote her lies into the hit US hospital drama.

we investigate the hollywood hoax That was stranger than any fiction.

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One afternoon in March 2020, millions of devotees of the hit hospital drama Grey’s Anatomy I settled down to watch the latest episode, titled Leave A Light On.

The episode, in which it is revealed that fan-favorite Dr. Izzie Stevens was left infertile after cancer The treatment was particularly moving for the entire cast and crew, as Elisabeth Finch, the writer behind the story, had heroically endured exactly the same thing.

Diagnosed with a rare bone cancer called chondrosarcoma in 2012, Finch suffered a seemingly endless series of tragedies in her personal life, including the loss of a dear friend in an anti-Semitic attack and her brother to suicide.

Except none of that was true.

For almost a decade, the writer, who is now 46 years old, wove a web of lies that deceived her friends, loved ones and coworkers, appropriating other people’s misfortunes as her own.

His exposure in 2022, thanks to his wife-turned-whistleblower Jenn Beyer, caused a stir. hollywoodand is now the subject of a new three-part documentary, Anatomy Of Lies.

“She lied about everything,” a source close to Finch, who has known her for more than 20 years, tells Fabulous.

“There was nothing that seemed forbidden.

“How someone can use other people’s trauma like that is crazy.

“Everyone who knew her still understands it two years later.”

Grow like a precocious child in leafy New JerseyFinch, who wrote 13 episodes of Grey’s and produced 172, as well as briefly playing a nurse in season 15, moved to California after college to pursue her dream of becoming a writer.

He started as a writing assistant on True Blood in 2008, then moved on to The Vampire Diaries in 2012 and Grey’s Anatomy in 2014.

From the beginning, Finch was open about her battle with cancer, wearing a scarf over her bald head and a bandage over the port on her arm used to administer chemotherapy drugs.

He often ran to the bathroom retching and took time off to receive treatment.

“She said she had to have an abortion due to the cancer treatment she was undergoing and that she had also lost part of her leg and a kidney because of it,” our source says.

“She had friends who would drop her off at the airport to fly to clinics for treatment and then secretly not travel anywhere.

“There were other friends who would drop her off at hospitals and then she would just wander around without getting any treatment.”

Many people were deceived by her, but his poor wife suffered the worst.

Meanwhile, she also wrote essays for publications like Elle and The Hollywood Reporter about her battle with cancer.

In 2016, she wrote her illness into the Grey’s Anatomy script, and the fictional character Dr. Catherine Avery was diagnosed with a similar spinal tumor.

Then, in October 2018, Finch said he had lost a friend in an anti-Semitic attack, in which a gunman stormed the Tree of Life synagogue in pittsburgh and killed 11 innocent people.

He even claimed that the FBI had allowed him to enter the site to help collect human remains.

“Finch studied at Carnegie Mellon University (in Pittsburgh) and had been to the temple several times for services,” the source says.

“After the shooting, she asked for time off from Grey’s and told the staff she had to help with her friend’s funeral arrangements.

“There were many people deceived by her, but the one who has suffered the most is poor Jenn.”

Jenn Beyer had just gotten out of a difficult relationship when she met Finch at a hospital. mental health clinic in spring 2019.

A nurse and single mother of five children OhioHe had little in common with the high-profile Hollywood writer, but the pair soon bonded over their shared tragedies.

When Jenn recounted the cruelties she said she suffered at the hands of her ex-husband, Finch revealed that she had suffered much the same physical and emotional abuse as a child from her brother.

“Jenn thought she had found a kindred spirit,” the source says.

“The reality is that what he found was toxic.”

While at the clinic, Jenn also learned of Finch’s cancer battle and the fact that he had lost a kidney, although the writer said she found it difficult to talk about and asked Jenn to respect her decision not to. talk about it.

Shortly after leaving the clinic, the couple fell in love and Finch sent Jenn a message saying, “My expectations are and always will be this: Don’t lie to me.

“That’s all I ask… It can upset us or discourage us, even hurt us.

“But the truth will come to light. Always.”

His words would prove strangely prophetic.

Several months later, in September 2019, Finch supported Jenn when her ex-husband committed suicide during their bitter custody battle.

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At the same time, however, Finch was appropriating Jenn’s trauma as his own and telling his coworkers that his brother, not Jenn’s ex-husband, had taken his own life.

In an email to his co-workers, he said: “Hi everyone, I’ve been away and will be back tomorrow… I just don’t know who is involved in what and I’d rather post it so no one is in the dark or feeling eggshell.” .

“I left (because) my brother committed suicide.

“He was on life support for a short time, but ultimately did not survive.”

They had no idea that their brother, who to date has refused to talk about his sister, was alive and well, working as a doctor.

Likewise, Jenn had no idea about the email, and in November 2019, the couple got engaged.

The following month, during a trip to a hospital after Finch said he wasn’t feeling well, the doctor performed a CT scan and referred to Finch’s “kidneys” (plural).

Jenn thought it was strange, but Finch overlooked it and the couple married in February 2020.

However, some friends were becoming skeptical.

“There were a couple of Finch’s friends who were starting to get suspicious. It seemed like bad things were happening to him after bad things, but he was very convincing,” the source says.

As the months passed, Jenn also couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.

He began to investigate, secretly flipping through Finch’s pages. Facebook account and discovered that the day he had told Jenn he had been to the Tree of Life Synagogue, he had actually been out with friends.

The next day, October 28, 2017, when she said she had been cleaning her friend’s body for burial, according to Jew As was tradition, he had gone out again.

She then saw photos of Finch supposedly in the middle of a chemotherapy treatment, his head bald but his eyelashes and eyebrows intact, something Jenn, as a nurse, knew was impossible.

So Jenn decided to confront her.

She blatantly stole, used, and sold Jenn’s pain, hurt, and trauma for her own benefit.

“I understand Finch confessed to him,” our source says.

“Jenn had every right to come out at that time, but she didn’t.

“However, Jenn’s condition that they stay together was a ‘confession twist.’

“Jenn wanted me to visit everyone I had lied to and tell them what I had done.”

As Finch began confessing to a small group of close friends, Hollywood rumors were in full swing and soon his private confessions were circulating in writers’ rooms and WhatsApp groups.

“No one could believe he had sunk so low,” the source says.

“Life informs art, but making things up, passing them off (other people’s suffering) as your own, and then using them as material in your work is incredibly calculating.”

In February 2022, Jenn received an anonymous email.

It contained the message Finch had sent to Grey’s staff about his brother’s alleged suicide.

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It was the last straw and Jenn contacted Shondaland, the successful production company behind Grey’s Anatomy, which also produces Bridgerton.

“Please stop allowing Finch to tell ‘his stories’, because they are the stories of other survivors…” she wrote before starting the divorce process.

“She blatantly stole, used and sold Jenn’s hurt, pain and trauma for her own benefit,” the source says.

“He used it as material for his writings and to gain the sympathy of others.

“It’s more than low to steal someone’s ideas as a writer, let alone your own wife’s misery.”

The following month, Finch was placed on administrative leave pending an investigation, but resigned from Grey’s Anatomy before she could be investigated.

When Vanity Fair published an exposé of her deceptions in March 2022, the disgraced writer disappeared from public view, only reappearing nine months later to give an interview to Hollywood newsletter The Ankler explaining her side of the story.

“It just got bigger and bigger and buried deeper and deeper inside me,” he said of the litany of lies he told.

“I know what I did is absolutely wrong.

“I lied and there is no excuse for it.

“Some people drink to hide or forget things.

“Drug Addicts try to alter their reality.

“Some people (cut themselves).

“I lied. “That was my way of coping and feeling safe, seen and heard.”

He also admitted to shaving his head and putting a catheter in his arm to fake cancer, and confirmed that his brother had not taken his own life.

When you love someone, you will ignore the red flags until they hit you over the head.

Grey’s Anatomy, the longest-running show of its kind in television history, may have survived the scandal, but Finch’s career did not.

Although she revealed her hopes of working on The Handmaid’s Tale in 2022, she has become a Hollywood pariah, rejected by the industry she loved, as well as being disowned by friends and several members of her family.

“Even at the end, he had to control the narrative. “I have no idea who she is friends with now,” the source says.

“Everyone she knew has excommunicated her.

“It’s very sad (because) she was very thoughtful and generous at times.

“I keep hearing that he wants to come back and work as a screenwriter, but I don’t see that happening.”

Meanwhile, Jenn tries to move on with the rest of her life.

“I let her into my house, into my children’s lives,” she says through tears in the new documentary.

“When you love someone, you will ignore the red flags until they hit you over the head.

“I trusted her, but I needed people to know the truth.”

• Watch Anatomy Of Lies on Sky Atlantic and now.

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