The directors of “Anatomy of Lies” weren’t moved by former “Grey’s Anatomy” writer Elisabeth Finch’s public apology following the release of their Peacock docuseries.
The three-episode saga from Evgenia Peretz and David Schisgall, which launched Tuesday on the NBCUniversal streamer, expands on Peretz’s 2022 Vanity Fair exposé detailing how the TV writer lied for years about having a rare form of bone cancer, to the point where she infused those lies into storylines she wrote into the ABC medical drama.
The doc includes interviews with Finch’s former colleagues from “Grey’s Anatomy” and “The Vampire Diaries,” acquaintances and her ex-wife Jennifer Beyer, whom Finch met while seeking treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder only to mine pieces of Beyer and her family’s troubled past for plot points in her work.
Finch shared a public apology on Instagram Tuesday after the release of the documentary, sharing that she’s been seeking treatment for “nearly three years” since her lies became a public scandal, and that she’s “making amends and expressing my genuine remorse as best I can when people are ready.”
“The one thing I can wholeheartedly agree with in her statement is that nobody has any reason to believe anything that she says,” Schisgall told TheWrap. “We really hope that she’s getting the help that she needs.”
But Peretz added, “We can’t really judge the sincerity of her sentiment because we don’t know her.”
Schisgall maintained that while Finch claimed to be reaching out to those involved in the scandal, she “has not tried to make meaningful amends with the Beyer family.” Two of Beyer’s kids sat down for interviews with the filmmakers for “Anatomy of Lies,” sharing their experience of how Finch came into their lives after meeting their mother in treatment, and the fallout of her exit after Beyer helped expose her scheme to the public.
Though “Anatomy of Lies” keeps focus on Finch’s tenure on “Grey’s Anatomy,” Peretz said the goal of the docuseries was to shine a spotlight on the people Finch “preyed upon and befriended” in Hollywood and in her personal life.
“It was the cancer lie that got her the job on ‘Grey’s’ and it was at ‘Grey’s’ where she started working in her personal stories into the storylines, and ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ was also her dream job,” Peretz told TheWrap. “It made sense for us to compress the earlier part of her life and those previous jobs, because there was so much to get to on ‘Grey’s.’ And then there was so much to get to in terms of her relationship and marriage with Jen, her integration into the family, and then Jen discovering the truth.”
Below, Schisgall and Peretz respond to the show’s reaction from viewers and Hollywood, what didn’t make the doc’s final cut and more:
TheWrap: How has it been to see the strong response from viewers, and from Hollywood, so far about this in-depth take on Elisabeth’s story?
Schisgall: It’s hugely gratifying. We’re really glad that people are responding to it and seeing Jenn and the Beyer family for the resilient, amazing people that they are. And, you know, it’s always great to be talked about in Hollywood when you’re a filmmaker.
Was there any beat from the story that you hoped to include in these three episodes that you had to leave on the cutting room floor?
Schisgall: There’s a ton of stuff that we weren’t able to put into the show… We weren’t able to put in the image that Elisabeth made of herself as Anna Delvey. We weren’t able to put in the story that we heard that she would be triggered by the word “hot dog” and so she would head out of the room.
Peretz: One of the crazy lies that we just didn’t have room for was that after her brother’s alleged suicide, she went on a trip to Hawaii with Jenn, and she told her “Grey’s” colleagues that she was going to reunite her dead brother’s love child with his Filipino mother, none of which was true. It was a very elaborate lie, and this is while she was with Jenn in Hawaii telling her she was scouting for locations for an episode of “Grey’s Anatomy.”
Jenn and her older kids open up about their experience with all this in the interviews, and you’ve talked before about seeing Jenn’s evolution from when you first met to now. What was their reaction to the show once they got to see the finished product?
Peretz: When I first met Jen, which at this point probably would have been almost two and a half years ago. She was very skittish about talking, extremely nervous about the fact that I was a reporter. Understandably, she had been just so betrayed by this Hollywood person, and she was very fresh off of that. So we just talked basically off the record for about six hours. And you know, she was quiet, hard to hear. Over the course of that meeting, I realized there is a much, much bigger story here than I thought going into it: This is about a Hollywood con artist. There was this incredible, dark emotional core and an entire family that had been hurt by this person.
She has now seen it, of course, and her children. I think they have all been pretty blown away by it, and I think it’s been super cathartic for them to have told their stories. They’re realizing the power of storytelling from a personal standpoint.
Schisgall: One of the reasons that they did this was to reclaim the narrative, but there’s something therapeutic in telling and owning your story in the public space.
The Vanity Fair story focused on Elisabeth’s job on “Grey’s” given that she was in the role when her lies came to the surface. The docuseries also stays mostly on her time on “Grey’s,” and even references the show on its title. Why put so much emphasis on that show specifically?
Schisgall: That was the bulk of her career out in LA. She was there for several years, and she got to be quite senior there…
Peretz: It was the cancer lie that got her the job on “Grey’s” and it was at “Grey’s” where she started working in her personal stories into the storylines, and “Grey’s Anatomy” was also her dream job. It made sense for us to compress the earlier part of her life and those previous jobs, because there was so much to get to on “Grey’s.” And then there was so much to get to in terms of her relationship and marriage with Jen, her integration into the family, and then Jen discovering the truth.
Schisgall: When you have a situation where someone is making up a fake life, taking from other people’s lives, and then putting it on television. I mean, it’s very visual. And that wasn’t something that really happened with “The Vampire Diaries” or “True Blood.” So that was another reason why we were drawn to “Grey’s,” because it’s just so incredible to see, to see her M.O., and the fact that she did it in front of millions of people but was hiding in plain sight.
The doc also touches on Elisabeth’s column for The Hollywood Reporter about being accosted by an unnamed director on the set of “The Vampire Diaries” (which has since been removed from their website). But we don’t get to hear much about the early days of her con while working on “TVD” and and in “True Blood.” Was there ever a consideration of bringing in some people from those shows, just like you did for “Grey’s” to lay that groundwork a little bit?
Schisgall: There were a lot of people who were reluctant to talk about this for reasons that are understandable. So part of it was who was ready to step forward and really tell their story. And I think that, she wasn’t at “Vampire Diaries” that long, so the relationships created over a series of six or seven years were, by their nature, much deeper.
Peretz: And for us, the most interesting thing about “The Vampire Diaries” era was the story she later put out about the director, even though she did that a few years after she had left… We were very happy to have a strong source who knew this director and could speak on his behalf very strongly, and that was a brand new element that had not been addressed in the Vanity Fair article.
Former “Grey’s Anatomy” writers Andy Reaser and Kiley Donovan provide rare insight into the inner workings of the show and Shondaland. How was it to secure those interviews?
Peretz: People who are currently writing for “Grey’s Anatomy” were very reluctant to participate, even though I did get to know some of them and spoke with them off the record.
I think you know a couple of things, Andy was both her immediate superior and very close friend, and both he and Kylie were two of the main people who stepped in and did her work for her, and cut her that slack when she needed time off for her treatment, etc. They were godsends, because they are incredible storytellers… And they were both also just incredibly empathetic human beings. I think through them, one was able to really get a sense of the sort of people that [Finch] befriended and preyed upon — extremely empathetic, kind people who would never doubt that someone had cancer.
Schisgall: The interviews were amazing and revelatory and intimate, and it was because those people wanted to open themselves up, both to own their story but also to let other people who have been in situations like this — though maybe not as extreme — see that it’s possible to not blame yourself and come through to the other side keeping your empathy, keeping your kindness. To see Hollywood writers doing that is a great thing for a broader audience to see.
One of the most fascinating pieces of this story is that some of the experts you spoke to said they believe there’s a way for Elisabeth to still salvage her career. Do you think Elisabeth could redeem herself with Hollywood at this point?
Schisgall: One of the one of the characters in the show made a bet with another very seasoned Hollywood person as to whether or not Finch would be able to get back into Hollywood over the course of the next two years, whether she’d be able to get a paying job. One of them said, “Absolutely not. Nobody’s going to want to work with this person.” And the other one said, “There’s people in Hollywood who love a second act, and there’ll be somebody who comes along and is really sympathetic.” They bet a very expensive dinner, and they recently resolved that bet in the favor of the person who said that she would not get a job.
Peretz: I mean, Anna Delvey ends up on “Dancing with the Stars,” but that’s a very different thing than being in a writer’s room.
Schisgall: I think it’s fair to say that the damage that Elisabeth left her in awake is several magnitudes more than Anna Delvey.
Is this the end of your reporting this story? Where would you want to go with this in the future?
Peretz: I don’t think we’ll be doing any more reporting on it. But if someone were interested in doing a limited series that would be incredible. I would love to see that.
Schisgall: We’d be glad to pour all the things that we know into something like that. There’s so much more to this story that we would like to pass off to others.
“Anatomy of Lies” is now streaming on Peacock.
