A former writer for ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy” has opened up about a plethora of lies she told while working for the show.
Elisabeth Finch came clean in a new interview with The Ankler, the outlet that first broke the story back in March that she was about to be investigated for claims she “fabricated medical details from her personal life.”
At the time, Finch had been put on leave from the show, but resigned before ABC parent company Disney had even begun their internal investigation into her claims.
Finch, 44, shared in the interview that “the biggest mistake of my life” was lying on the award-winning show.
“What I did was wrong,” she shared. “Not okay. F—ed up. All the words.”
Finch had written an article for Elle in 2014 detailing her diagnosis with chondrosarcoma, a rare bone cancer. She also apparently lost a kidney, part of her leg and was forced to abort a fetus; all of these attributed to her supposed cancer.
She was later hired by Shonda Rhimes to join the “Grey’s” writers’ room and had elements of her supposed story incorporated into the show. Finch had previously written for “Vampire Diaries” and “True Blood.”
The show’s former writer shared with the outlet that she “never had any form of cancer”. Finch also admitted to lying about her older brother, Eric’s, suicide while working on the acclaimed show. According to WebMD, Eric is a licensed pediatrician working in Florida.
“I told a lie when I was 34 years old and it was the biggest mistake of my life. It just got bigger and bigger and bigger and got buried deeper and deeper inside me,” Finch told The Ankler on Wednesday.
“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.”
It was more than just the lie, though. A colleague described her as a co-worker “who lost her hair, whose skin was yellow and green, who had a visible chemo port bandage, who regularly took breaks to vomit, who only ate saltines for long periods of time and who wrote and talked about her experiences all the time.”
She shared that the trauma that caused her to begin lying was a knee injury in 2007.
“Everyone was so amazing and so wonderful leading up to all the surgeries. They were so supportive,” Finch said. “And then I got my knee replacement. It was one hell of a recovery period and then it was dead quiet because everyone, naturally, was like, ‘Yay! You’re healed.'”
She continued: “But it was dead quiet. And 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.”
