In 2018, Elisabeth Finch threw a 40th birthday party that her friends will never forget. Flying high as the star writer/producer of 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 scalloped cake that one participant remembers as “huge.”
The celebration marked the remission from his life-threatening cancer as well as a historic anniversary. Old friends, new friends and friends from the industry all danced and mingled.
“Finchie announced that his doctors from the Mayo Clinic were there but they don’t want to be identified,” the attendee recalled. “We all wondered who the doctors were.
“Of course there were no doctors… It’s not a lie that got out of control [as Finch has claimed]. It’s a lie that perpetuated his story and made the party better.
Last week, Finch finally exposed his series of Emmy-worthy lies to the pinnersaying, “I’ve never had any form of cancer.
“I told a lie when I was 34 and it was the biggest mistake of my life. It just got bigger and bigger and bigger and buried itself deeper and deeper. in me “, she continued.
In March, it was revealed that Finch had been placed on administrative leave to “Grey’s Anatomy” and was under investigation by the human resources department of Disney, the parent company of the ABC network. She later took personal leave a spectacle.
The whoppers – including a lost kidney and a friend who was killed in Pittsburgh Terrorist attack at the Tree of Life Synagogue of 2018 – are magnificent. She claimed her brother committed suicide in 2019; in fact, he is a practicing physician in Florida.
Finch told people she was being harassed and an anti-Semitic poster was left on her doorstep.
But the centerpiece was Finch’s 10-year story of being diagnosed with chondrosarcoma, a rare form of cancer – even going so far as to say she had to abort a fetus because of the disease. She allegedly used the tall tale to manipulate friends, win the sympathy of employers, and advance her writing career. Many of his medical issues informed the plots of “Grey’s Anatomy” and Finch wrote several published essays about his experiences.
“His lies are so detailed and so deep. She built her career around this lie and earned millions of dollars from it. And she didn’t care who got dragged in,” a “stunned” former friend told the Post.
“Finch is extremely intelligent and extremely talented. She was able to weave her complex stories and keep everything straight.
Barbara Wiener, a documentary filmmaker close to Finch’s relatives, said the whole thing was considered a betrayal. “My friends feel taken advantage of,” Wiener told the Post. “They had dedicated a lot of emotional space to Finchie. Now they are hurt and betrayed.
Finch blamed the longstanding lies on a “maladaptive coping mechanism” that kicked in after a knee injury in 2007. Friends went out of their way to help him at the time, but when the knee healed and people left, Finch missed attention. The shelled cancer story was her way of getting it back.
And Finch went all-in.
“She had commented on her thinning hair,” Brenda Cox, a friend of Finch’s estranged wife, Jennifer Beyer, told The Post. “She was helping me clean something that was a little gross. I said I felt bad that she did. She said she didn’t mind ’cause she had no sense of smell [due to alleged chemotherapy].”
The former friend even believes that Finch wore makeup to improve the appearance of being sick.
Finch admitted to keeping his skin pale and his head shaved, as well as wearing a fake catheter port and pretending to vomit in shared bathrooms.
Before all hell broke loose, “You felt lucky to have Finch in your life,” the former pal added. “She was loyal and generous. She took people on elaborate vacations, took dinner notes, paid for expensive hotels, and really went out of her way for people.
Now the former friend said: “People are either deeply hurt and feel like shit; or they are angry that they have been lied to by someone they trusted. We feel like we were extremely supportive of her for something that wasn’t real.
And supporting Finch wasn’t flippant. A Minneapolis pal drove her to the Mayo Clinic for cancer treatment but, according to the Ankler, Finch walked the halls of the medical facility, killing time while the pal waited in the parking lot.
The former friend recalls a harrowing community effort on Finch’s behalf, as a circle of people banded together to create monthly care packages for her.
“The treatment packages were themed around what Finch liked,” the former friend said. “One was themed ‘Friday Night Lights.’ There were pictures of people holding up signs related to the show, plus we put out gift cards and certificates for meals from local restaurants, it was all you would give to a sick and depressed friend.
Hurt feelings don’t come from wasted money, the former friend said. “Nobody gives anything away on money. We care about the completely fake life of someone we thought we knew and loved. She turned out to be sick, but in a different way than we thought.
The hurt is evident even in 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 a Hollywood actor who had been close to Finch.
“I really don’t want to talk about Finchie. Everything said is true,” said another ex-pal.
But cracks in his story began to appear. “Things had stopped adding up,” Wiener said. “It would be cancer in one place with treatment going well; then a cancer somewhere else with a treatment gone wrong. The fact that close friends were not allowed to be part of his treatment was strange.
“You don’t expect anyone to lie about cancer,” the former friend continued. “But you can’t accuse them of lying. You would be the worst person in the world.
Other things also raised questions. “I thought things had gone off the rails with the Tree of Life Synagogue situation. Alright, she could have gone to the synagogue there [as a college student] and didn’t tell me. It’s pretty believable,” the former friend said. “But then she said her friend died in the attack. Then she claimed she flew to Pittsburgh and was allowed into the synagogue to remove her friend’s body. She really walked into an active crime scene? It was a lot to manage.
By her own account, things really started to go downhill for Finch in 2019, when she checked into an Arizona medical center specializing in the treatment of mental trauma. There she met another patient, Beyer, a registered nurse. They fell in love and married soon after, and Beyer pressed Finch to confess his lies. When Finch hesitated, according to The Ankler, Beyer did it for her.
Finch and Beyer are now going through a divorce.
Asked for comment, Finch’s attorney Andrew Brettler pointed The Post to The Ankler’s story: “Elisabeth said it all. Nothing further from us. The Post also contacted Beyer separately and received no response.
But some think Finch is still lying.
“The Ankler article continues to ring false. This gives the impression that she believes everyone has come together and decided to eliminate her. It was not a group decision,” the former friend said. “She is trying to gain sympathy by blaming others for what happened. In fact, no one believes she told a lie that got out of hand. Everyone thinks it was premeditated.
As for what might happen next for Finch, she told The Ankler that she hopes to get back to writing for Hollywood.
“We think she’s trying to get a book deal. She’s a writer and she has to survive,” the former friend said. “I can’t imagine him being in the writer’s room for another TV show. The stench on her is extreme.