In 2018, Elisabeth Finch threw a 40th birthday party that her friends would never forget. Flying high as a star writer/producer for the long-running ABC series “Grey’s Anatomy,” she rented a downtown Los Angeles warehouse, hired DJs and lavish catering, and beamed at the presentation of a sparkler-festooned cake that one attendee remembers as “enormous.”
The celebration marked the remission of her life-threatening cancer as well as a landmark birthday. Old friends, new friends and industry friends all danced and mingled.
“Finchie made an announcement that her doctors from the Mayo Clinic were there but they don’t want to be identified,” recalled the attendee. “We were all wondering who the doctors were.
“Grey’s Anatomy” writer Elisabeth Finch (far right) lifted from her own health tragedies for story lines — but now admits she lied about having cancer, an abortion, her brother’s suicide and more.Disney General Entertainment Con“Of course, there were no doctors … This is not a lie that got out of control [as Finch has claimed]. It’s a lie that perpetuated her story and made the party better.”
Last week, Finch finally came clean about her Emmy-worthy string of falsehoods to The Ankler, saying, “I’ve never had any form of cancer.
Finch admitted to The Ankler last week: “I’ve never had any form of cancer.”@elisabeth.finch.3/Facebook“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,” she continued.
In March, it was revealed that Finch had been put on administrative leave at “Grey’s Anatomy” and was under investigation by the human-resources department at Disney, network ABC’s parent company. She later took personal leave from the show.
The whoppers — including a lost kidney and a friend who was killed in Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue terrorist attack of 2018 — are stunning. She claimed that her brother had committed suicide in 2019; in fact, he is a practicing doctor in Florida.
Friends of Finch (above, in a blue gown) told The Post how they were duped by her lies.Disney General Entertainment ConFinch told people she was being stalked and anti-Semitic poster had been left at her door.
But the centerpiece was Finch’s 10-year-long story about being afflicted with chondrosarcoma, a rare form of cancer — even going so far as saying she’d had to abort a fetus because of the disease. She allegedly used the tall tale to manipulate friends, gain sympathy from employers and advance her writing career. Many of her medical woes informed storylines on “Grey’s Anatomy” and Finch wrote several published essays about her experiences.
“Her lies are so detailed and so deep. She built her career around this lie and made millions of dollars through it. And she didn’t care who got dragged in,” one “stunned” former friend told The Post.
Finch was a producer on “Grey’s Anatomy” from 2014 to 2021, and began writing for the show in 2015.ABC via Getty Images“Finch is extremely smart and extremely talented. She was able to weave her complex stories and keep everything straight.”
Barbara Wiener, a documentary filmmaker close to people in Finch’s inner circle, said this whole thing is being viewed as treason. “My friends feel exploited,” Wiener told The Post. “They had committed a lot of emotional space for Finchie. Now they are hurt and betrayed.”
Finch has blamed the long-running lies on a “maladaptive coping mechanism” that kicked in after a 2007 knee injury. Friends went out of their way to help her at the time, but when the knee healed and people moved on, Finch missed the attention. The ginned-up cancer story was her way of getting it back.
According to one former friend, Finch announced at her 40th birthday party that her Mayo Clinic doctors were in the audience but didn’t want to be singled out.Disney General Entertainment ConAnd Finch went all in.
“She had commented about the thinning of her hair,” Brenda Cox, a friend of Finch’s now-estranged wife, Jennifer Beyer, told The Post. “She was helping me to clean something that was a bit gross. I said that I felt bad that she was doing it. She said she didn’t mind because she didn’t have a sense of smell [due to alleged chemotherapy].”
The former friend even believes that Finch wore makeup to enhance the appearance of being ill.
Finch has admitted to keeping her skin pale and her head shaved, as well as wearing a fake catheter port and pretending to vomit in shared bathrooms.
Finch married Jennifer Beyer in February 2020. They are now divorcing.@elisabeth.finch.3/FacebookBefore all hell broke loose, “You felt lucky to have Finch in your life,” the former friend added. “She was loyal and giving. She took people on elaborate vacations, picked up dinner tabs, paid for expensive hotels and really went out of her way for people.”
Now, the former friend said, “People are either deeply hurt and and feel like crap; or else they are angry about having been lied to by someone they trusted. We feel that we supported her in an extreme way for something that was not real.”
And supporting Finch was not casual. One pal in Minneapolis drove her to the Mayo Clinic for cancer treatment but, according to the Ankler, Finch actually roamed the halls of the medical facility, killing time while the pal waited in the parking lot.
Sources also said that Finch (left) could be “loyal and giving,” treating friends to dinner and vacations.Disney General Entertainment ConThe former friend remembers a taxing community effort on Finch’s behalf, as a circle of people pooled together to create monthly care packages for her.
“The care packages were themed to what Finch loved,” said the former friend. “One was themed to ‘Friday Night Lights.’ There were photos of people holding up signs related to the show. Plus we put in gift cards and certificates for meals from local restaurants. It was everything you would give to a friend who was ill and feeling down.”
The hurt feelings do not stem from money wasted, said the former friend. “Nobody gives a s–t about the money. We give a shit about the completely untrue life of somebody we thought we knew and loved. She turned out to be sick — but in a different way than we thought.”
One source told The Post that Finch claimed to have lost her sense of smell due to chemotherapy.@elisabeth.finch.3/FacebookThe hurt is evident even from people who feel too hurt to talk about it.
“It’s too much. It’s too painful. I just want it all to go away,” said one Hollywood actor who had been close with Finch.
“I truly don’t want to talk about Finchie. Everything that has been said is true,” said another ex-pal.
But cracks in her story began to show. “Things had stopped adding up,” said Wiener. “It would be cancer in one place with treatment going well; then cancer in another place with treatment going poorly. The fact that close friends were not allowed to be part of her treatment was strange.
Finch tweeted defensively about cancer.“You don’t expect somebody to lie about cancer,” continued the former friend. “But you can’t accuse them of lying. You’d be the worst person in the world.”
Other things raised questions as well. “I thought things went off the rails with the Tree of Life Synagogue situation. Okay, she could have gone to synagogue there [as a college student] and not told me. That is believable enough,” the former friend said. “But then she said that her friend died in the attack. Then she claimed that she flew to Pittsburgh and had been allowed to enter the synagogue to remove her friend’s remains. She really walked into an active crime scene? That was a lot to handle.”
By her own account, things really began to unravel for Finch in 2019, when she entered an Arizona medical center that specializes in treating mental trauma. There, she met fellow patient Beyer, a registered nurse. They fell in love and married soon after, and Beyer pressed Finch to confess about her lies. When Finch hesitated, according to The Ankler, Beyer did it for her.
Finch and Beyer are now in the process of divorcing.
Seen here at her wedding to Beyer, Finch also claimed to have lost a friend in the Tree of Life synagogue shooting.@elisabeth.finch.3/FacebookAsked for comment, Finch’s attorney, Andrew Brettler, pointed The Post toward The Ankler story: “Elisabeth said it all. Nothing further from us.” The Post also reached out to Beyer separately and received no response.
But some believe that Finch is still lying.
“The article in The Ankler continues to ring untrue. It makes it sound like she believes that everyone got together and decided to cut her out. It was not a group decision,” the former friend said. “She is trying to gain sympathy by blaming other people for what happened. In fact, nobody believes she told a lie that got out of control. Everybody believes it was premeditated.”
As for what might be up next for Finch, she told The Ankler that she hopes to get back into writing for Hollywood.
“We think she is trying to get a book deal. She’s a writer and she has to survive,” said the former friend. “I can’t imagine her being in the writer’s room for another TV show. The stink on her is extreme.”
