SHOCKER: Disney Investigating 'Grey's Anatomy' Writer
A star Shondaland scribe may have fabricated medical details from her personal life
When Elisabeth Finch joined Grey’s Anatomy in 2014, Shonda Rhimes, the creator of a show that regularly takes events from real life and spins them into fictional storylines, got more than just a writer. In addition to her resume that included stints on Vampire Diaries and HBO’s True Blood, Finch could draw from a deep and troubling reservoir of real-world experiences and offer them up to her colleagues in the writer’s room. And she regularly did.
Despite being just 44 years old, Finch has seemingly endured a lifetime of ailments and suffering which helped transform her into an icon of the show. She was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer the year before Grey’s Anatomy hired her. She went through several brutal rounds of chemotherapy, which forced her to abort a fetus. She lost a kidney and part of her leg and then was required to have knee replacement surgery only to later learn that she had been misdiagnosed by a doctor whom she later confronted. She was also the victim of verbal and sexual abuse from a male director on Vampire Diaries.
We know these intimate details because Finch regularly published personal essays for publications including Elle, The Hollywood Reporter and the Shondaland website in which she shared her own harrowing medical experiences, some of which made their way into actual Grey’s Anatomy storylines. The essays were unsparing, poignant and raw. Some of them were also, The Ankler has learned, possibly not true.
Multiple sources have confirmed to The Ankler that there are serious concerns within Shondaland (whose Inventing Anna on Netflix is about a con woman skilled in impersonation) and Disney that at least parts of Finch’s life story she shared in the writers room and with press were made up. When asked for comment, a Shondaland rep reponded to The Ankler,