Vanity Fair writer Evgenia Peretz likes to take her time when reporting out a story. But in March of 2022, when she first met Jennifer Beyer — the then-wife of former Grey’s Anatomy writer Elisabeth Finch, who was later revealed to have fabricated stories about her life — Peretz knew she had something really big to get out.
“I knew that this was going to be a hot story, so it was one of those situations where I felt like I needed to report this very quickly — and there was a lot of reporting that needed to be done,” she tells The Hollywood Reporter.
Jump ahead two months and her story landed as a two-part feature for Vanity Fair that would expose Finch as having conned one of the longest-running writers rooms in television. But the writer and executive producer’s betrayals went beyond the walls of ABC’s beloved hit medical drama Grey’s Anatomy, they also touched the lives of Beyer and her children in profound ways.
Peretz would go on to team with her husband, David Schisgall, to co-direct Anatomy of Lies, the three-part Peacock documentary now streaming that untangles the stories spun by Finch to show how her Hollywood world would ultimately collide with that of Beyer’s, who Finch married in 2020.
Behind the scenes, as Peretz was speaking with Beyer for her story, Grey’s producer Shondaland and Disney had publicly announced that Finch was under investigation after allegations had come to light that the top writer had fabricated stories about her life. Finch — who claimed she suffered from rare bone cancer chondrosarcoma, lost a kidney and underwent an abortion, and suffered from PTSD over close ties to the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting — wrote her trauma into memorable Grey’s Anatomy episodes involving fan-favorite characters. (She also wrote about some of her purported struggles in publications like Elle, Shondaland and The Hollywood Reporter, which removed her story in 2022.)
The fact that Finch was lying about some of her life experiences — as Anatomy of Lies reveals in interviews with Beyer — was brought to creator Shonda Rhimes‘ attention by Beyer herself in an email that would change the trajectory of Finch’s legacy. By the end of the month, Finch took a leave of absence and exited Grey’s Anatomy, after spending eight seasons as a writer on the series. Later that year, she admitted to never having any form of cancer.
Anatomy of Lies features interviews with Beyer and two of her five children, along with former Grey’s Anatomy writers Kiley Donovan and Andy Reaser. Last week, on the day the doc released, Finch posted an apology statement to her public Instagram page (which has since been made private), saying, “I trapped myself in the addiction of lies, betraying and traumatizing my closest friends, family and colleagues.” In response, Beyer posted a lengthy message to her Facebook page, viewed by THR, saying, in part, “The pain she aimed to provoke was achieved in a subtle manner.” She called the public apology a “clear example of her manipulative tactics at play, rich with deeper implications. … I want to make it clear she has demonstrated no meaningful remorse for her actions toward either me or my children.”
THR spoke with Peretz and Schisgall about gaining Beyer’s trust, and the lingering questions they still have for Finch and her impact on Hollywood writers rooms. They also share an update to the ending title cards that Beyer and Finch, who had been estranged, are now divorced: “[Jenn is] reclaiming her narrative and her belief in herself.”
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What has the response been since you released Anatomy of Lies?
PERETZ It seems to be getting a ton of attention, and it’s really gratifying to see the response.
SCHISGALL The nice thing is that the contributors have been calling.
PERETZ I think they feel relieved to have told their story. It can be very therapeutic to have told your story in that type of forum. Some of these people felt very deeply about the experience they went through
Evgenia, May of 2022 was when your Vanity Fair article came out. When did you enter this story?
PERETZ It was March of 2022 that I first met Jenn and started reporting the story. Usually, I take my time with reporting. But in this case, I never really stopped working on it for two months straight.
What then made you want to adapt this for the screen and work together to direct this?
SCHISGALL Well, I think the story is amazing. The people who we were meeting, the [Grey’s] writers, are really good storytellers. And Jenn Beyer was clearly someone who had great intelligence and great resilience and great access to her feelings. The idea that there was this person who was taking peoples’ stories, making them their own and then putting them on TV was a visual hook that was really intriguing.
What did you hope to accomplish with Anatomy of Lies and when did you know you wanted to tell it in three parts?
SCHISGALL We started at four parts. You always feel like you want another stretch of time but you probably don’t need it. Three broke down nicely into a good act structure. We shot the interviews probably 40:1. We spent a lot of time with people, sometimes several days. We shot a lot of interviews.
PERETZ Many, many hours with Jenn Beyer. I think that was probably four or five days straight.
During Beyer’s interviews, you can physically see how difficult it was for her to relive. How did you gain her trust and support her in her interviews?
PERETZ The gaining of trust happened over a long period of time, before we even shot a frame. We had to get to know her really well, and a lot of that happened during the writing of the article. But then that continued for the several months when we were trying to conceive of this as a docuseries and selling and planning it. By the time we sat down with her, we knew her very well and we knew the entirety of the story. We didn’t know how she was going to be telling that story with a camera in her face and lots of crew around, and there were definitely some triggering subjects. In those cases, we would take breaks as long as we needed. But she really stuck with it and hung in there and wanted to get her story out really clearly. She put in the time and effort to make sure we had the strongest interview possible.
SCHISGALL We took a great deal of care so that going back to these traumatic events would be something she could tolerate without effects. Part of that was scheduling a lot of time [for the interviews]. There were a lot of things that went into it; several other things that I don’t feel comfortable saying because it’s someone’s private recovery. But there were a whole bunch of protocols and strictures that we did to make that safe for her. A lot of those things came from our experience, but a lot of them came from Jenn herself. Her recovery is really driven by herself and her caregivers, and she led the way in how we approached that interview so it was safe for her. It was a real learning experience.
What were your conversations like with her children, Maya and Van, about why they wanted to participate?
PERETZ That was a huge breakthrough for us. We didn’t know going into the process that we would even have them. One day I think she said, “Maya wants to talk.” We had had conversations with Maya more casually and knew how brilliant and dynamic and articulate she was. But then we sat down for that interview and were spellbound by what an incredible storyteller she was and by her emotional intelligence and authenticity in front of the camera. And then we found out that Van, her brother, also wanted to say something. He was this wonderful, emotional, touching person. It was great to have their participation because I think that really showed something about Jenn as a mother, which is so important to her and very relevant in terms of the themes of the series as a whole.
SCHISGALL We never pushed for the children. That came about in the family’s own dynamic in recovering from this terrible thing that had happened to them as a group. And when we did those interviews, it was always a two-part interview: Jenn sitting next to Maya and sitting next to Van. We shot it with three cameras, so it feels like it’s one person. But that was one of the many things we put in place in order to make this as safe as possible, that Jenn was right there.
The documentary presents the two parts to this story that were playing out side by side: The more well-known impact Finch had on Hollywood and the personal impact she had on Beyer’s family. At what point did you know you had the participation from some of the former Grey’s Anatomy writers and did that shape the format?
PERETZ We knew pretty early on that we had a couple of them. A bit later into the process Kiley Donovan said she wanted to be in it. And, we didn’t know her story. We were just spellbound when we talked to her. That added a whole new layer to Finch’s story that was not in the Vanity Fair article. So between those three Grey’s Anatomy writers, we had a very strong spine of what Finch was like in the writers room, what she was like in Hollywood and how those stories got folded into Grey’s. Then we had that Jenn part. We certainly played with many ideas along the way of how to interweave this. There was a lot of trial and error. But I think we came up with a pretty seamless way to interweave them.
So you first heard Donovan share her story [which helped inspire a storyline in the rape survivors episode “Silent All These Years” that Donovan says Finch wrote without her consent] during your interviews with her. How did that piece things together?
PERETZ That’s right. It was really fascinating, I just remember hearing her story and thinking, “Oh, she is sort of a model for Jo [the Grey’s character played by Camilla Luddington].” We already knew that Finch had this strange affinity for Jo, so this added another fascinating element. It was a heartbreaking, moving story. This is like the most personal facet of someone’s identity, and to think it’s very possible that Finch took that for this big, high-profile episode was quite shocking.
SCHISGALL She offered it to us in the moment, and it felt really intimate and moving. We hope it feels that way on the screen also.
The doc notes that Luddington didn’t respond to your request for comment. Were there others you reached out to from the Grey’s team? [Editor’s note: The Hollywood Reporter reached out to ABC and Shondaland for comment.]
PERETZ Sure, we would have loved to have had Shonda Rhimes, Debbie Allen. But I guess, understandably, they didn’t want to participate.
If you had their participation, what were some questions you would have asked them?
SCHISGALL Pretty much the questions we were asking the writers, who were the closest things to [getting them]. One of the things that was lucky or good in this story is that there really isn’t a story to tell about Shondaland’s reaction, because they reacted very well. There’s really nothing to say beyond that they did what you would expect a responsible company to do. So beyond the questions around, “What was your relationship like with her?” and “How did you find out?” — the questions that we asked everyone else — I don’t think there would be more that we would bring into [a conversation with them].
What was your correspondence like with Finch and, were you hoping she would participate?
PERETZ We absolutely wanted her to participate and we did reach out multiple times. We said specifically, “If you don’t want to do it, is there someone who might speak on your behalf?” We wanted that very badly. Same thing with the article I wrote with Vanity Fair. That certainly would have been good. I think we were lucky that she has given lots of interviews, so we were able to use some of that archival material as well as the Ankler interview she gave where she lays out what was going on with her. So we were able to incorporate that.
What questions do you still have lingering for Finch?
SCHISGALL So many.
PERETZ Oh, there are so many. I think I would like to know to what extent, if at all, did she think about the people who were taking care of her, who thought that she was dying, who sacrificed for her? I’d love to know, deep down, did she feel any guilt about that? Was she ever able to step into their shoes? But, there are many questions.
SCHISGALL I think the questions we would have would be the questions that everyone would have. What would be appealing about it would just be to create an interview space where you let her be under the lights and talk for a long time. More than any question, having that experience and doing that kind of interview, I think, would be illuminative of her. And it might be illuminative for her. That’s how we would approach it, “What do you have to say for yourself?”
She released an apology statement when the doc came out. What is your reaction to what she said?
PERETZ All we’d really like to say is that we do hope that she continues to get the help that she needs for whatever is going on.
In that 2022 Ankler interview, the writer talked to a doctor who suggested she could have an underlying medical disorder. He said the twist of this story is the Hollywood angle, and he mentions other Hollywood writers who have embellished things to get their starts. Why do you think this has become such a fascinating story?
PERETZ I do think she went far beyond the embellishments that Peter Kiefer referred to in The Ankler. We were very cognizant making this series that we did not want to diagnose her. We’re not doctors. We’ve never met her. That’s a very heavy thing to diagnose someone. So we consciously were trying not to over-psychoanalyze her but to really talk about, what is the effect of someone like this on the people around them? And what it takes from the people around them.
As for why this is blowing up so much, I think people are always interested in con stories. But I think it’s very interesting to see one of these people infiltrate a writers room, and also this idea of lived experience has such currency in Hollywood. When people are looking for stories they want to know, “This happened to you? Oh, my gosh.” In a way, that’s a wonderful thing, because authenticity does lend to better storytelling in most cases. But perhaps there was an over-hunger for stories of trauma and she was able to deliver. So it’s also a story that we feel has a bit of a Hollywood edge in that respect.
SCHISGALL We’ve done some fiction writing as well. The stories you hear and the stories you tell about yourself and the stories you put on the screen, usually those lines are pretty black and white, and we’re all moving between them as fiction makers. And to go to a place where those lines are erased is fascinating, and something I think many writers and storytellers feel is taboo. As two storytellers, the blurring of those lines interests us.
Do you think Finch’s behavior will have an impact on writers rooms moving forward?
SCHISGALL We don’t have any idea of the effect on the Grey’s writers room, because the people we interviewed are no longer there.
PERETZ I think writers as a whole, there’s no way there isn’t going to be a little more skepticism in a writers room if a person comes in from out of the blue with crazy stories that have happened to them. It has happened before among Hollywood writers, people pretending something happened or embellishing something to make them seem more like an expert. I do think this might make people more wary or skeptical of those claims.
SCHISGALL Throughout this process, we got one story after another about other writers who had embellished their life story, so I think that’s another reason why people are interested. In a certain way, this is an extreme case of something that happens pretty frequently.
What do you make of Finch saying at the end of that 2022 interview that she hopes to write for Hollywood again, suggesting The Handmaid’s Tale?
PERETZ As we show in the series, many people reacted to that piece, perhaps not in the way she had hoped. Because it seemed like less of an apology and more of an explanation and, “this is why I should get back into Hollywood, because I’ve suffered so much.” I think that interview rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.
SCHISGALL We don’t know the totality of what was said between them, but what came out was more focused on her explanation and career than on her expressions of remorse.
Your doc ends by saying Beyer and Finch are still going through a divorce. How is Beyer doing today?
PERETZ They are actually now divorced. That happened a few weeks ago. I think Jenn feels so much stronger now than before she told her story. I think she’s really feeling like she’s reclaiming her narrative and her belief in herself. Telling the story was also a way to show her kids what she had gone through, who didn’t quite understand. So I think it’s been an incredibly cathartic experience. And, it’s not always easy. There’s still pain there that she’s grappling with. But she’s in a much stronger place, and that’s really gratifying to see.
SCHISGALL There are a lot of things that went into Jenn getting to the place where she is, beyond the film. But seeing that transformation of her who, from the day we first met her was very fragile, to this person who is now very strong, has really been one of the most gratifying things in my career.
Beyer spoke of supportive messages she received from the Grey’s team, calling her a truth-teller. Do you feel that you accomplished what you set out to do?
PERETZ One-hundred percent. As David says, it’s been very gratifying to see her healing throughout this entire process. And, it’s not just for her. We were hoping to touch a wide audience who had similar experiences where they’ve been deeply betrayed to, lied to or suddenly woke up and thought the person they loved was not that person. This sudden sense of gaslighting is a very common phenomenon, and so we’re hoping people who have had similar experiences can see this and feel like they’re not alone. And not feel they are gullible but feel that it’s a very common thing and that it’s very human.
SCHISGALL The people who are taken advantage of in this way are people who are very empathetic. In a certain way, the bigger your heart, the more liable you are to something like this.
Is there more to this story?
SCHISGALL There’s tons and tons and tons more to this story.
PERETZ Not necessarily that we’re going to tell, but that exists.
SCHISGALL In terms of the content, there’s a huge amount more that didn’t get into the show for time or structure or because we didn’t have it fully sourced. There are a lot more things that happened in the course of this that aren’t in the show, and in whole areas of her life that we didn’t get into. Before Grey’s, there are phases we didn’t discuss. But yeah, there is a ton more.
After directing on this together, what’s next?
SCHISGALL I’ve done a lot of docs about people who have been recently traumatized. What I’ve gotten to [realize], especially after this project, is that we need more protocols in doing what we do. We’re drawn to trauma. I think there’s a lot to be learned. The field is moving in that direction and it’s a place I’m really interested in right now. How do we create those spaces with protocols and practices so we can get into peoples’ traumas, but do it in the safest and most therapeutic ways? And also for the filmmakers. Because when you are working with people, it’s not just their mental health at risk. There’s a lot that happens to you in terms of taking on that responsibility and being around that. For me, that’s where my interest is at the moment. But we also want to make more films, more docs, more screenplays.
PERETZ And write more articles.
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Anatomy of Lies is now streaming on Peacock.
English (US) ·