The Grey's Anatomy Writer Hoax

"For years, a Grey’s Anatomy writer told her personal traumas in online essays, and wove those details into the show’s plot—until a surprising email to Shondaland accused her of making it all up."

I had missed this story by Evgenia Peretz when it came out in early May in Vanity Fair ("Scene Stealer: The True Lies of Elisabeth Finch," Part 1 and Part 2), and only saw it because of this MedPage Today (Emily Dwass) piece ("Was I Conned by a 'Grey's  Anatomy' Writer? — Her alleged duplicity could make things tougher for female patients"). It's fascinating and chilling, and a reminder of how even people we're predisposed to trust are sometimes untrustworthy.

One item, by the way, from the MedPage piece:

I get why no one doubted her cancer journey—who would lie about having a deadly disease? According to Peretz, Finch was given time off from work whenever she requested it to take part in treatments and clinical trials at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.

What I can't wrap my head around is why Finch's colleagues apparently didn't question the escalating and extreme crises that tormented her. Peretz writes about the string of calamities that afflicted Finch, "some of which she chronicled for the world, some of which she talked about in select company." There was a doomed pregnancy, a failing kidney, a friend murdered in the Tree of Life synagogue mass shooting (Finch claimed to help clean up the body parts), an abusive brother who attempted suicide. Peretz's article calls into question whether any of these things actually occurred.

How was it possible that no one at "Grey's Anatomy" saw these catastrophes as red flags that something was off, and that Finch needed some kind of mental health intervention?

It seems to me the answer is clear: It's naturally always hard to accuse someone of lying, especially about circumstances to which most people are normally inclined to react with sympathy. But when skepticism and failure to #Believe… is often condemned as a moral failing, who wants to "question"?

Comments

[Bob from Ohio]

The story is hilarious. TV types [and Dwass too] taking themselves way too seriously. Its a soap opera in a medical setting. Nobody looks to it for medical advice or inspiration.

Finch seems like a great storyteller though.

[Kazinski]

Why are you posting about this when you could be posting about topics other commenters don’t want you to post about?

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

Who are you to question what I, another commenter, don’t want Prof Volokh to not post about? Why have you not questioned what Prof Volokh doesn’t want commenters to not post about?

[ReaderY]

I too object to your to your urging Professor Volokh to not post about this topic. You should have deferred to me and let me do that.

[lucia_l]

Another reason colleagues may not have said anything is that French was writing good saleable scripts and her purported illnesses weren’t costing them anything.
About two decades ago I worked out at a “Curves”. The receptionist told me all sorts of whoppers about herself. Sometimes these were “one up” stories- I told her my brothers in law were twins. Guess what? shewas a twin. But not a normal twin. She had absorbed her other twin in utero, that was discovered … somehow. The she told me she was recovering from cancer. And she mentioned lots of other nice customers were bring her food to help her since she was so tired from chemo. Various gifts she could be given because she was worth of charity were mentioned. (I did not bring her food or other things.)

There were other health stories. I figured they were not true– but I wasn’t going to confront her. It didn’t cost me to have her siddle up while I was working out and volunteer all this info. If anything, I became sort of amused and wondered what new health story I would hear that day.

Then I got a root canal and mentioned it. She looked up my phone number, called me and asked for me to give her my left over pain meds. There was a long story about how she’d lost her own pain medication in a taxi drive back from her oncologist. She couldn’t phone him after hours because…. something. She really, really needed my meds.

I was pretty dang sure that whole story wasn’t true. She just wanted my meds. And I also became certain none of the other stories were true.

But the fact is: By story #2, I already seriously doubted. But I never confronted her. That’s could be what happened at Grey’s Anatomy too.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Is there a lawsuit or legal issue involved in this, or is this just a white, male blog sniping at a woman to flatter the incels and misogynists who resent women?

Carry on, clingers. Until replacement. And how you spent your time until replacement is, and should be, up to you.

[legalizeshrooms]

In my childhood it puzzled me why true books would be categorized as “non-fiction”, as if fiction was the norm.

[legalizeshrooms]

In the age of deepfakes “believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.” has lost all irony.

[Eugene Volokh]

Well, especially if we legalize shrooms.

[legalizeshrooms]

That is the closed-mind point of view.

[Voize]

Chilling? No. Interesting, in a Frank Abagnale kind of way, but why chilling?

[Bruce Hayden]

My wife found herself in a somewhat similar situation (concerning fake cancer) maybe 15 years ago. She ran into a guy who supposedly had aggressive bone cancer. He had been an independent radiation tech, reading X-rays for physicians and hospitals, so knew how to fake the cancer. He convinced his mother that he could no longer work, so she sent him maybe $8k a month to pay for his chemo. My (now) wife is always a soft touch for this sort of thing, so either she or her daughter would stop by his apartment routinely to bring him cooked meals, and make sure that he was ok. Sometimes they would find him passed out (mostly) on his bed, supposedly from the chemo. Things started to unravel when he drove her and some of her furniture up to her house in MT. By the time they got up there, the bed of his pickup had a significant layer of beer cans. He had apparently been chugging most of a six pack of beer at every fuel stop. That’s when the light went off, and she realized that he was a raging alcoholic. The money from his mother, along with disability payments, apparently were going to booze and cocaine, and that was why he was passing out. His ex wife suspected that had been going on, and his daughter was coming around. But his mother couldn’t believe that anyone, much less her son, would lie like that. That’s just not supposed to be something that anyone would lie about, and esp to his mother. Looking back, the evidence of his fraud should have been obvious (such as no amputations, despite his supposedly aggressive case of bone cancer). Out of curiosity, my step daughter would drive by his apartment every once in awhile, and his fancy pickup was still there, suggesting that he was still alive and living there several years later. And still collecting large chemo checks every month from his mother.

[CJColucci]

Shonda Rhimes had another hit show, Scandal. Shonda is Yiddish for “scandal.”