‘Anatomy of Lies’: Inside the “Twisted” Story of the ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Scammer

Sometimes in television, the wildest drama happens off-camera. That may be true even of the reliably dramatic Grey’s Anatomy. In 2022, the industry learned that Grey’s writer Elisabeth Finch had fabricated major details of her life story—falsely claiming that she’d been diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer and had suffered an abortion, as well as the loss of her kidney—and had even woven some of these fabrications into the show.

On October 15th, her falsehoods will be explored in a three-part Peacock docuseries called Anatomy of Lies. Directed by VF contributing editor Evgenia Peretz and documentary filmmaker David Schisgall, Anatomy of Lies takes a deeper look at the web spun by Finch over the course of a decade, as well as the woman who bravely came forward to put an end to her deceit: Finch’s ex-wife, Jennifer Beyer.

“Jenn is such a sympathetic character, and she’s been through so much,” Peretz tells Vanity Fair in an exclusive interview. “I thought that there was more to say about her life than I could fit into the article.”

Peretz has been living in Finch’s world for the past two years, ever since she received a tip from a former Grey’s Anatomy writer that all might not be as it appeared with Finch. Shortly after the tip, Peretz was on her way to meet Beyer, a registered nurse and mother of five from Kansas. Beyer met and fell in love with Finch in 2019, while both were patients at an Arizona mental health treatment center. Beyer had just gotten out of an abusive, 18-year marriage and was suffering from severe PTSD; Finch was getting treatment under the alias “Jo”—the name of a Grey’s Anatomy character she was researching at the time. After marrying Finch in 2020 and relocating her family to California, Beyer began to realize the life she was embarking on with Finch was built on a lie—and that her wife was mining Beyer’s own past-trauma for “Jo” storylines on Grey’s Anatomy, while claiming elements of Beyer’s traumatic past as her own.

“She didn’t want me to have a notebook. It was clear she had suffered major trauma,” says Peretz of her first meetings with Beyer. “She didn’t want a tape recorder, so I just sat there with her for six hours hearing her story.” That initial conversation led Peretz to two months of fast and furious reporting, piecing together the true story underneath the lies Finch told. “I knew I needed to report this relatively quickly,” she says. “As soon as I met Jenn, I was just racing to get more sources and write it up.” The reporting process was so all-consuming that it became “one of those stories where you never get out of your PJs,” Peretz says. “But when your head is in something so exciting, that’s all you want to do.”

Peretz published Beyer and Finch’s story in two parts in Vanity Fair, sending shockwaves through the entertainment community. The saga, titled “Scene Stealer,” became one of Vanity Fair’s most read stories of 2022. In the wake of the story, Finch was suspended from the Grey’s Anatomy writers room, and ultimately never returned. She released a series of statements via her legal representatives—including Andrew Brettler, an L.A. litigator who has represented Prince Andrew, Chris Noth, and Armie Hammer—where she cast doubt on Beyer’s credibility, saying that her ex’s testimony was neither “reliable” nor “unbiased” because the two women are in the midst of a “highly contentious divorce.” But Finch did eventually in an interview with The Ankler admit that she’d never had cancer, as she’d claimed. “I told a lie when I was 34 years old and it was the biggest mistake of my life,” she said. “It just got bigger and bigger and bigger and got buried deeper and deeper inside me.”

Although Finch drew most of the headlines, Anatomy of Lies places Beyer at the center of the narrative. Beyer appears in the docuseries alongside former Grey’s writers and Finch co-workers Andy Reaser, Kiley Donovan, and Mark Wildling, among others, to unpack how Finch got away with her lies for so long. “They did it because they had so much respect for Jenn,” said Finch of the individuals who chose to sit for the documentary. “They saw that she had been taken advantage of. She’s not a Hollywood-savvy person. She’s a nurse in Kansas who had no exposure to this kind of life. They really felt like she had done something brave, and they wanted to step up for her.”

The documentary, Peretz said, was aided by Beyers’ penchant for documenting her life, a habit Beyers formed after years embroiled in custody battles with her ex-husband. “She obsessively took pictures and video of everything happening in her life, because she had lost her children for a period,” said Peretz. “I think when she got them back, and she got her life back, she was like, ‘I don’t want to miss a moment of this. I want to cherish every memory.’ So, she had this incredible trove of visual material that I knew would be absolutely key.”

Although she has shared her side of the story previously, Finch does not appear in the documentary and has never had any direct contact with Peretz, despite Peretz reaching out multiple times. Grey’s Anatomy creator and Shondaland figurehead Shonda Rhimes also declined to participate in both the original story and subsequent docuseries. “I think Shondaland wanted this story to go away,” Peretz shares. “But there were several people at Grey‘s who felt like what they went through helping [Finch] out, thinking their friend was going to die, going to bat for her, was traumatic for them. So they didn’t want to just sweep the whole thing under the rug… They did sacrifice for her. They did help her write her scripts. They gave her time off. They gave her love and sympathy. They cried with her. It was no joke.” (Representatives for Rhimes and Shondaland did not immediately respond to Vanity Fair’s request for comment).

Peretz is grateful that Anatomy of Lies was able to provide a safe space for those personally affected by Finch’s fabrications—whether or not they appeared on camera. “The people that I talked to at Grey’s—including several who aren’t featured—I think they’re big supporters of the project,” she says. “I really hope that this doc series does the story justice in terms of what they went through.”

But none were more affected by Finch and her machinations than Beyer and her family. Peretz said that one of the most important moments in filming the docuseries occurred when Beyer allowed her oldest children, Maya and Van, to sit for interviews. “She trusted us,” said Peretz. “The big breakthrough is when she said, ‘I want my older kids to talk to you.’” Including the eldest children’s perspectives “just deepened the story and added just an amazing layer to it,” said Peretz. “Obviously, we could not have done that had we not really gotten to know [Beyer] so well and earned her trust.”

While the drama is focused on Finch, ultimately Anatomy of Lies is a story about Beyer’s perseverance. “It can be very cathartic to tell your story,” said Peretz. “I hope that for Jenn’s sake, having told her story to such a wide audience is therapeutic. And I hope that audience members who have been in a similar situation to Jenn, where they’ve been lied to or betrayed and feel gullible or whatever it is, feel like they’re not alone.”

Anatomy of Lies premieres on Peacock October 15th.