Elisabeth Finch’s ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Scandal Is Now a Comedy

Elisabeth Finch spent eight years convincing her Grey’s Anatomy colleagues that she had cancer. Now some of those same colleagues are buying tickets to watch her get roasted onstage by a writer who worked in the writers room with the infamous con artist.

At a tiny 80-seat theater in Los Angeles, comedian and former Grey’s writer Jamie Denbo has turned one of Hollywood’s most spectacular deceptions — first exposed by The Ankler — into a one-woman show called I Am NOT Elisabeth Finch. And judging by the crowd at Saturday night’s performance — which included current and former Grey’s writers and even one of Finch’s former CAA agents — the people who lived through the scandal are ready to laugh.

The biggest gasp of the night came when Denbo alleged that Finch had a longtime Grey’s medical adviser fired after he questioned the plausibility of a storyline inspired by her supposed cancer. It was shocking to hear it told as comedy when I attended the show, at the Lyric Hyperion Theater in Silver Lake.

“Real cancer isn’t funny,” Denbo tells me. “Fake cancer is really funny.”

Finch did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Reps for Disney’s 20th Television, which produces Grey’s Anatomy, didn’t respond to The Ankler’s request for comment.

Denbo’s show isn’t holding back about what happened behind the scenes — or worrying much about the consequences. It offers an extraordinary window into one of television’s longest-running and most famously earnest writers rooms, where Finch’s elaborate deception went undetected for years.

But what happens if Finch herself shows up to a performance? And why does Denbo think Grey’s creator Shonda Rhimes may have one more role to play in the scandal?

Denbo has some thoughts. And she’s not especially worried about who hears them…