A Hollywood insider nailed as a compulsive liar

How often do you tell little lies in order to look good or protect somebody’s feelings? Researchers say we all do it at least twice a day. But compulsive liars are another story. They dig really deep holes. This is an unbelievable story about a hotshot producer/writer on Grey’s Anatomy who destroyed her career and her personal life lying about her cancer battle and her brother’s suicide.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, are you with me on this? We all
stretch the truth from time to time, but for some
it gets out of control, and that includes big shots
in politics, business, and Hollywood. The unbelievable tale of a
hot shot writer for Grey's Anatomy who lied about her
cancer battle and her brother's suicide is what we're talking about.

(00:20):
I'm Patty Steele. A compulsive liar gets nailed. Next on
the backstory. We're back with the backstory. Sure, most of
us tell little lies occasionally. Studies say we do it
maybe twice a day, and if you deny it, you're

(00:40):
probably lying. Usually we do it to look good, or
protect someone's feelings, or because we're scared. But there are
people who really go off the deep end. Some are
surprisingly big names, like a guy we all know about,
Congressman George Santos, who lied about Oh, I don't know everything.
And Elizabeth Holmes, who conned investors out of billions for Thoroughnose,

(01:03):
her startup company that produced a device she said could
diagnose almost any illness it's just a drop of blood,
only it couldn't. And she's in jail. But what about
Elizabeth Finch, who is she? Well, she was a really
respected Hollywood producer writer. She wrote for True Blood in

(01:23):
Vampire Diaries. She was successful, but she wanted more. She
wanted to be famous, and she was willing to tell
horrific lies to get there. So she writes this really
compelling article for l magazine about herself being a TV
writer while undergoing treatment for bone cancer. Hollywood loves her story,

(01:44):
and Grey's Anatomy hires her. She becomes a superstar writer
for the show. Now, she starts using her cancer battle
in storylines for Grays, but it sort of becomes like
an emotional Ponzi scheme. The more she shares, the more
empathy she gets, and the more storylines she has for scripts,
so she invents even more. She claims she'd lost a

(02:06):
kidney and had to abort a baby due to her treatment.
She then started wearing makeup to make herself look sick.
She shaved her head and even complained of losing her
sense of smell all due to chemo. She wore a
fake catheter port and pretended to vomit in public bathrooms
so people thought she was sick. Friends took her on

(02:26):
vacations and put together lavish monthly care packages for her.
Grey's Anatomy celebrates her, even putting her on the show
playing a nurse. The show's creator, Shonda Rhymes, has her
write about her life and her medical issues on shondaland
dot com, but she needs even more so. She shares
other personal traumas, claiming that her brother had sexually abused

(02:50):
her when they were kids and that he'd later committed
suicide because of it. She said she had a friend
who was killed in the twenty eighteen mass shooting at
the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and that
the FBI had allowed her into the crime scene to
remove her friend's remains. At one point, Elizabeth throws herself

(03:11):
a huge fortieth birthday party. She rents a warehouse in
la with lavish catering for hundreds of guests. She says
the party is also celebrating the remission of her life
threatening cancer. She told the crowd that her doctors from
the Mayo Clinic were there but didn't want to be identified.

(03:31):
But after ten years of lies, it started to unravel
when she got married to a woman who for several
years pushed her to come clean. When Elizabeth didn't, her
wife finally went public with the truth and eventually left,
taking her kids with her. At Grey's anatomy, Elizabeth was
put on administrative leave, investigated by Disney's HR, and later

(03:55):
she lost her job. She finally admitted she never had
any kind of care answer and that her brother is
actually a doctor and he is alive and well living
in Florida. She says it was just a lie that
got bigger and bigger, and she calls her lis a
maladaptive coping mechanism, which I guess sounds better than compulsive liar,

(04:16):
says Elizabeth. Some people drink to hide or forget things.
Drug addicts try to alter their reality. Some people cut themselves.
I lie. She says she just wanted to be seen
and heard, and that it all kicked in after a
knee injury. At the time, friends were helpful and sympathetic,

(04:37):
but when the knee healed, she really missed the attention
and she invented the cancer story to get it back.
It's been rough for her since it all went public.
She's not allowed to see the kids. She says. Family
and friends called me a monster and a fraud and
said that all I'll ever be known for and soon
more truth would come out about me. What does she

(04:59):
did now? She says she fills her days with long
walks and a lot of therapy. A friend says, her
lies were so detailed and so deep. She built her
career around her cancer and made millions off of it,
and she didn't care who she dragged into it. Part
of the problem is we live in a world where

(05:20):
a good liar gets rewarded right. A politician gets elected,
a business person gets money like crypto king Sam bankman
Fried or Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff, who can forget him?
Both of those guys cost billions for investors. And finally,
in Hollywood, a well crafted lie about your own illness

(05:40):
and pain gets you money, empathy, and a chance to
be seen in the spotlight, at least for a little while.

(06:00):
I'm Patty Steele. The Backstory is a production of iHeartMedia
and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our
executive producer is Steve Goldstein of Amplified Media. We're out
with new episodes twice a week. Thanks for listening to
the Backstory. The pieces of history you didn't know you
needed to know