Former "Grey's Anatomy" writer and consulting producer Elisabeth Finch admitted to telling lies about her personal life and her health.
In an interview with The Ankler, Finch admitted she never had "any form of cancer."
"What I did was wrong," she said. "Not OK. F***ed up. All the words."
Her remarks come after a report earlier this year by The Ankler that revealed the hit ABC medical drama was looking into concerns that Finch had fabricated stories about her life, including that she had been diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer, lost a kidney and part of her leg that required her to have knee replacement surgery.
On Thursday, The Ankler published a followup story stating that Finch "taped a dummy catheter to her arm and shaved her hair to feign that she was undergoing chemotherapy."
She resigned from her position and sought in-patient treatment before the show launched an investigation, the outlet further noted. Commenting on this, Finch said she missed the show and her fellow writers.
"It's like a family and … one of the things that makes it so hard is that they did rally around a false narrative that I gave," she said.
The lies began around the same time as the 2007 Writers Guild strike, during which time Finch injured her knee while hiking and had knee-replacement surgery. The recovery process was grueling but during that time people were "so supportive"... until she recovered, and then there was radio silence.
"It was one hell of a recovery period and then it was dead quiet because everyone naturally was like, 'Yay! You're healed.' But it was dead quiet," she said. "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."
According to the report, in 2019 Finch also lied about her brother's suicide.
"I've been gone bc my brother died by suicide," she wrote in a note at the time explaining an absence from "Grey's Anatomy," according to The Ankler. "He was on life support for a short while but ultimately did not survive."
However, her brother, Eric, is very much alive and working today in Florida as a doctor. Finch admitted she felt guilty for the false stories which have led to her losing work and being disowned by family members.
"I know it's absolutely wrong what I did," she said. "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."
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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