Disgraced Grey's Anatomy writer Elisabeth Finch took fake 'puke breaks' to keep up cancer lie, says ex-colleague
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The disgraced TV star also drastically altered her appearance to keep up her lies and make people think she was undergoing chemotherapy, according to Finch's former colleague, writer and producer Andy Reaser.
In a new clip from a new Peacock documentary called Anatomy of Lies, Reaser said Finch would come into work “with a shaved head and a greenish hue” in order to keep up the act that she was unwell.
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Hide AdThe three-part Peacock docuseries tells the full story of Finch’s fabricated health stories, which she told to inspire episodes and get ahead in Hollywood and confessed to in 2022. In the documentary, Reaser describes her actions as being 'like performance art”.
|He told the series makers: “I felt betrayal. The thing is, it was so confusing. You have to move through eight years of interactions to even wrap your head around it and I'm not even sure that I still fully have.
“She was showing up to work with a shaved head and a greenish hue. She looked like she lived in a microwave. She was eating these Saltines and drinking ginger ale and going to the bathroom to take puke breaks from her chemo.”


He added: “I've heard people say she had gone to where all the medical props were and want to look at a very specific piece of something. For all I know, she had a Lego taped to her chest. It's just so hard to imagine that someone could commit that strongly to that and it seems so much harder to me than just doing your job well.”
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Hide AdHired to work on Grey's Anatomy in 2014, Finch pretended she had to undergo chemotherapy for cancer. She claimed she lost her kidney as part of the treatment, and also had to have an abortion because of it. Parts of her fake story ended up in the story lines of the beloved Shonda Rhimes show, which aired for 21 seasons from 2005.
Seven years after beginning her cancer lie, Finch was first exposed by her then wife Jennifer Beyer, who speaks out for the first time in the docu-series.
Beyer and Finch married in 2020, but shortly after their marriage Beyer - who is a survivor of domestic abuse - she began to realise that her then-wife was extracting her own trauma for storylines on Grey's Anatomy.
Finch was also claiming elements of Beyer's past, which included domestic abuse during her previous 18-year marriage, as her own. Appearing in the docuseries alongside other Grey's writers and Finch's co-workers, Beyer discusses just how her ex-wife was able to get away with her lies for so long.
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Hide AdIt was December 2022 when Finch admitted that she had lied about her personal and medical history and confirmed she had not had any form of cancer. She also said that she taped a catheter to her arm and shaved her head to make it appear as though she was undergoing chemotherapy.
In an interview with The Ankler she said: "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. I've never had any form of cancer. I know it's absolutely wrong what I did. I lied and there's no excuse for it." Anatomy of Lies is available to watch on Peacock today (Tuesday October 15).
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