Anatomy of Lies expertly explains the Elizabeth Finch scandal
the true crime that's worth your time
At its heart, new Peacock docuseries Anatomy of Lies is a con story, but not one based in financial shenanigans, violence, or espionage. Instead, it's a portrait of the kind of person we've all run into (or even been!) at some point in our lives, but at a radical, bold, and cinematic extreme. That ultimate relatability is one of the reasons the series is so engaging: Elizabeth Finch, the disgraced Grey's Anatomy writer at the show's center, isn't much different from every inveterate liar slash tragedy vampire you knew in middle school, high school, or college, especially if you lived in the kind of place people are yearning to leave. The big difference is that Finch (which is how she's referred to throughout the show, instead of my usual journalistic affectation) played out her fabulist drama while living the life of her dreams. It's a mystery that the reporting this show is based on couldn't really resolve — and, sadly, the series doesn't come up with any new answers.
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I don't blame you if you've forgotten the Elizabeth Finch case: in March of 2022, Substack publication The Ankler dropped a curious item on some anonymously sourced claims that Finch — a writer on the Shondaland show since 2014 who'd also published a number of personal essays on issues including her battle with bone cancer, her #metoo experience in the writers' room of The Vampire Diaries, and other first-person accounts of trauma — had fabricated "at least parts of [the] life story she shared in the writers room and with press." A subsequent podcast revealed more details; a follow-up two weeks later suggested that Disney's attempt to investigate the claims had met an impasse.
A couple months later, in May, Vanity Fair dropped a two-part investigation that laid the story out in full. Evgenia Peretz's Scene Stealer (part one is here, two is here) had a big advantage over the Ankler reports: Jennifer Beyer, Elizabeth Finch's now-estranged wife, was an active, much-quoted participant in the story. I feel like that week, all anyone I knew talked about was Peretz's extremely long two-parter, which scrolled on and on down the VF website. Despite the writing, which was vivid and precise, the weight of the claims against Finch grew so heavy that it was hard to keep track. She lied about her relationship to victims of a mass shooting. She faked a chemo port. She repurposed the painful personal experiences of colleagues into stories about herself. She claimed her (living) brother had killed himself, after years of allegedly abusing her. None of it, people around her said, was true.
Anatomy of Lies is based on that reporting, so here is where I should mention that I also contribute to Vanity Fair. I don't know Peretz, nor was I working there when her story was published. I didn't have any insight into the creation of this series, which was made in conjunction with Vanity Fair studios, a video production arm I was unaware of until I watched this show. I'm writing this review as an outsider.
The last line of that disclaimer makes me the anti-Finch, if the accounts of the numerous folks interviewed in Anatomy of Lies are to be believed. One fellow writer, for example, says wryly that if an issue became a hot topic, Finch almost always revealed a personal experience with said issue, from abortion to sexual abuse to PTSD. This is recounted, now, with faces of disbelief...but also, with a little tinge of betrayal. Being on the business end of those lies and manipulation has made for a better, more shocking story than any that Finch claimed. She might have published a (since redacted) essay in a major magazine about how a doctor misdiagnosed her cancer. but now a multitude of writers have a "I worked with a pathological liar" story that beats its socks off.
Those interviews — especially with Beyer, Finch's now-estranged wife — are what makes Anatomy of Lies worth watching. First, they put to rest the disbelief you might have felt when reading about the case, that whole "how could they not know?" reaction we all have any time we hear about a particularly outrageous con. The interviews are also a good reminder of the true human cost of the kind of deception we're talking about, how all these people lost a little bit of their willingness to trust, open their hearts, or relate to people as a result of their experience with Finch. It's a less concrete set of scars than physical violence or theft, but no less damaging.
It's also worth watching for how neatly it organizes all the deceptions, and how elegantly it lays out the strange and meaningless lies Finch told while at the height of her career. Details that were head-scratching when read feel jaw-dropping when onscreen. "This woman wrote for True Blood," I texted my husband. "Why did she need to make anything up?"
The show attempts to answer that question, and that's where it falters. The interview subject it turns to, a British, male film school classmate of Finch's who doesn't seem to have had an actual connection to her otherwise, opines about possible motivation with a little too much schadenfreude-y glee. She spun these lies because the way into a Hollywood writer's room is by having an engrossing personal story, he claims. She had to stand out from the crowd, and this was how.
I don't buy it. We live in a world where women are actually expected to have fewer problems than men, where they're forced to hide their wounds like a stray dog in fear of euthanasia. You don't even have to be sick to lose out on a job or a promotion, you just need to be sad, or pregnant, or in relationship trouble. A claim that alleging (likely made up) abuse, managing (admittedly falsified) cancer, and suffering through a (predicated on lies) mental health crisis isn't a way to get ahead, it's a way to be left behind. To assert otherwise says more about the man speaking than it does about the situation at hand.
But I also understand why the decision was made to keep his incredible suggestion in, because otherwise we're left with little resolution. True, Finch "confessed it all" to the Ankler in late 2022, the series acknowledges, but even that confession rang hollow. We're still left wondering why Finch threw away the life that so many folks would lie, cheat, and steal to get in the first place. Hell, maybe even she doesn't know.
All three episodes of Anatomy of Lies dropped on Peacock on Tuesday, October 15.
Anatomy of Lies
Recommendation: Go for it!
The case in favor:
Does an excellent job of repackaging some solid 2022 reporting
Puts a human face on Finch's victims
If you hadn't already read the Ankler or VF stories you're in for a wild fucking ride, baby.
The case against:
If you read the 2022 stories and thought "I'm good" then this is a skip
It's not a big, "need to know" story that'll change the face of social justice or whatever
I can't overstate how unpleasant I found the fellow film student commentator