After Anatomy Of Lies, Here’s Where Elisabeth Finch Is Today

Trigger Warning: This piece contains mentions of sexual assault.

Twenty-one seasons in, Grey’s Anatomy is known for its dizzying plot twists. But a new Peacock docuseries, Anatomy of Lies, revisits a behind-the-scenes saga that rivals the wildest moments in Shondaland — and it’s about one of the women who wrote them.

Here’s a recap of the shocking revelations in Anatomy of Lies and where Elisabeth Finch is today.

A Disturbing Deception

The three-part series (which dropped on Oct. 15) revolves around Finch, a decorated writer who was open about living with cancer while working in the Grey’s writers room. When Catherine Fox was diagnosed with chondrosarcoma in Season 15, it was a storyline directly inspired by Finch and her frustration with treatment.

“I wanted Catherine to be diagnosed with a spinal tumor similar to mine,” Finch wrote in an essay for Elle. “Only this time, the doctors would tell her the truth. Because she, like the rest of the world, shouldn’t have it any other way.”

But Finch later admitted in a 2022 interview with The Ankler that she “never had any form of cancer.”

Finch stepped away from the show earlier that year following reports about her behind-the-scenes deception. She had joined Grey’s Anatomy in 2014 when an essay about her purported cancer caught the show’s attention. Creator Shonda Rhimes met with her before offering a job, Finch recalls in archival footage featured in Anatomy of Lies.

Finch’s story didn’t just help her get the job but allegedly helped her keep it. In the docuseries, her former co-workers claim that she was “on the chopping block” based on her early performance, but leadership reportedly stepped in to prevent Finch from being fired, citing sympathy for her illness.

Cancer wasn’t her only deception. One writer, Kiley Donovan, said Finch came to be regarded as a “trauma vampire,” pretending other people’s horrible experiences were her own.

Donovan also shared in Anatomy of Lies that she’d once confided in Finch about finding out that her mother had been raped by her biological father. That was around the time that Finch began writing “Silent All These Years,” the acclaimed episode where Jo finds out she was conceived through rape.

“I haven’t even had the chance to figure out if I want to tell this story, and now it’s an episode,” Donovan recalled. (As the doc notes, Camilla Luddington, who plays Jo, reportedly suggested that element of her character’s storyline.)

Finch makes a cameo in the episode, playing one of the women supporting a survivor getting a rape kit at Grey Sloan.

The Truth Came Out

During a stay at a mental health treatment center, Finch forged a connection with a fellow patient named Jenn Beyer.

Finch married Beyer, a nurse and mother of five, in 2020 and moved to Kansas to be with her. However, Beyer soon learned that Finch’s claims about her personal life weren’t adding up. Crucially, she discovered an email that Finch had written to her Grey’s colleagues that seemed to show she’d co-opted a traumatic event from Beyer’s life as her own.

Beyer ultimately emailed her experience with Finch to Rhimes. Soon, The Ankler reported that Finch was being investigated, and a two-part Vanity Fair exposé followed.

Where Is Elisabeth Finch Today?

Finch finally opened up about her deception in an interview with The Ankler in December 2022. “What I did was wrong,” she said. “Not OK. F*cked up. All the words.”

She said while there was “no excuse” for her lies, they were a “maladaptive coping mechanism” from an allegedly traumatic childhood. She also pointed to her experience with a knee injury in adulthood. She explained that after “everyone was so amazing and so wonderful leading up to all the surgeries,” she found the silence in recovery challenging.

“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,” she said.

As of the 2022 interview, Finch said she wanted to work again, specifically pointing to The Handmaid’s Tale as a “dream” show to work on.

Beyer, for her part, shared in Anatomy of Lies that she and her children are looking ahead. “I want to work really hard at creating new, safe, fun memories that are real,” she said. Per the doc, the exes are still in the process of divorcing.