Sometimes, truth really is stranger than fiction – even when the fiction is the overwrought drama and bizarre medical mysteries of Grey’s Anatomy. For seven years, Elisabeth Finch, a TV writer with credits on True Blood and The Vampire Diaries, helped craft the credulity-straining and tearjerking plotlines on the long-running ABC medical soap, with a particular knack for bringing the show into the social media zeitgeist via personal experience. “Finchie”, as she was known in the writers’ room, penned episodes on chondrosarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer she developed in 2012 (and wrote about in essays for Elle, among others); about needing an abortion during cancer treatment (also outlined in a video for NowThis); about sexual assault, which she said happened to her on the Vampire Diaries set (another essay, for the Hollywood Reporter, during the height of #MeToo).
Finch’s penchant for spinning personal trauma into television gold brought industry acclaim, social media clout and a close personal relationship with Grey’s creator, Shonda Rhimes – and, seemingly, ever more tragedy. In 2018, Finch abruptly left work to attend to a friend killed in the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh; according to Jewish tradition, she told her colleagues and social media followers, she helped clean his remains off the floor. A year later, she disappeared from work again to pull the plug on her brother’s life support after his suicide attempt – a final act of abusive vindictiveness, she said. And then, in May 2022, the biggest shock of all: a two-part investigation by the Vanity Fair journalist Evgenia Peretz that undid all of Finch’s stories. The articles, now adapted into the Peacock docuseries Anatomy of Lies, portrayed Finch as a prolific fabulist mining others’ kindness for attention, sympathy and clout. “She befriended people who are very empathetic, and preyed upon that empathy,” Peretz told the Guardian.
