A former co-producer and writer for “Grey’s Anatomy” spent years faking a cancer diagnosis, which she used to inspire a storyline on the long-running hit show and fool her colleagues until her wife allegedly outed her to producers, the writer admitted in a story published Wednesday, Dec. 7.
Elisabeth Finch, who also previously wrote for HBO’s “True Blood,” told the Hollywood-focused newsletter The Ankler that she has “never had any form of cancer.”
“I told a lie when I was 34 years old and it was the biggest mistake of my life,” said Finch, now 44. “It just got bigger and bigger and bigger and got buried deeper and deeper inside me.”
Finch, who IMDb notes was credited with writing 13 “Grey’s Anatomy” episodes and producing 172 episodes, told colleagues on the show that she had been diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer, chondrosarcoma, a decade ago, which she also wrote about for publications including Elle Magazine and The Hollywood Reporter.
In a 2019 piece she wrote for The Hollywood Reporter — which was still online as of Dec. 8 — Finch said her own diagnosis inspired a storyline for the “Grey’s Anatomy” character Catherine Fox, played by Debbie Allen.
Finch’s admission comes nine months after Disney, the parent company of ABC, and Shondaland, the company founded by Shonda Rhimes in 2005 to produce “Grey’s Anatomy,” put the writer on leave as they investigated allegations that she was faking her diagnosis after Finch’s wife, allegedly tipped them off soon after she found out about Finch’s lie, the Ankler reported. The couple is in the process of divorcing.
Finch’s wife did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday, Dec, 8. Representatives for ABC and Shondaland also did not respond to requests for comment.
Finch wound up leaving the show before an investigation could begin and checked herself into an in-patient treatment facility in Arizona, according to the newsletter.
“What I did was wrong. Not okay. F----d up. All the words,” Finch said.
A former colleague from “Grey’s Anatomy” told The Ankler that Finch appeared as though she lost her hair and that she “regularly took breaks to vomit” and “only ate saltines for long periods of time.”
The newsletter also alleges that Finch “taped a dummy catheter to her arm and shaved her hair to feign that she was undergoing chemotherapy.”
Of those actions and how they impacted people on set, Finch told the newsletter, “one of the things that makes it so hard is that they did rally around a false narrative that I gave.”
She also told The Ankler that she started lying about cancer after she got a knee replacement surgery at age 34 and people in her life were “so supportive.”
Lying, she said, was “my coping and my way to feel safe and seen and heard” after the support ended following her surgery; she also alleged that physical and emotional abuse from her brother throughout her childhood contributed to her lies.
Finch’s brother could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday.
According to The Ankler, Finch also falsely claimed her brother committed suicide in 2019 — though he is currently alive and working as a doctor in Florida — and falsely claimed she lost a close friend in the 2018 antisemitic terrorist attack at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.
Dr. Marc D. Feldman, a professor of psychiatry and adjunct professor of psychology at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa and the author of “Dying to be Ill: True Stories of Medical Deception,” told The Ankler that Finch’s case sounds like “a classic case of factitious disorder,” which the Mayo Clinic defines as “a serious mental disorder in which someone deceives others by appearing sick, by purposely getting sick or by self-injury” whose cause is unknown.
Finch did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment Thursday.
“Grey’s Anatomy” debuted in 2005 and is currently in its 19th season. The show, which won a 2007 Golden Globe Award for Best Drama Television Series, stars Ellen Pompeo, who is also a producer and recently announced her departure from the show.
This story first appeared on NBCNews.com.