Two “Grey’s Anatomy” stars have spoken out about Elisabeth Finch, the former writer for the show who faked having cancer.
Finch’s story was recently explored in the Peacock docuseries “Anatomy of Lies,” which addressed her web of lies that caused her to get fired from “Grey’s” after working as both a writer and a producer from 2014 to 2022.
Jessica Capshaw and Camilla Luddington, who play Arizona Robbins and Jo Wilson on the series, respectively, addressed the documentary on Monday’s episode of their “Call It What It Is” podcast.
“It never occurred to me to not believe her,” said Capshaw, 48. “The things that she lied about, you could never in a million years imagine questioning.”
Luddington, 40, asked Capshaw about not being completely “surprised” that Finch was lying about her cancer diagnosis.
“It’s so hard to explain,” Capshaw began. “Of course I was surprised that she wasn’t who she really said she was, and she was not reporting any experiences that were actually hers. But I wasn’t surprised that someone could do that. And I sort of just felt like, ‘Oh, well, she was really good at that because I believed her.’”
“But again, I was not sitting in the seat of the woman who she married and represented a completely different life to,” Capshaw added. “That feels like a movie.”
Luddington declined to talk about her personal experience with Finch on the set of the long-running ABC show, but she did share a story involving Finch that she’s never told before.
“I remember going to Hawaii for the first time, and I was so excited that I could afford going to Hawaii. I was never able to afford something so tropical and glamorous. And I told everybody that I was going to Kauai, and I was really excited. And I was going with my boyfriend who’s now my husband, obviously,” she recalled.
“I think it was about three days into that trip and [Finch] was sat at the bar in the hotel,” the British actress went on. “The hotel where I was in Kauai, sat in the bar, three days into my trip. Yeah, she was with somebody else, and I just remember thinking it was the most random coincidence.”
Luddington confirmed that she “told so many people” that she was going to Kauai at the time. “I’m sure I would have told her,” she said, adding, “Is there a world where she just happened to be on vacation at the same time as me at that hotel in Kauai? Sure. There’s definitely a world where that happens.”
“I don’t know,” Capshaw skeptically responded.
“I don’t like the now questioning of that, going back and reevaluating all those things,” Luddington added.
Capshaw recalled seeing Finch “all the time” on the show’s set. She also said that they had a conversation just as Capshaw was leaving the series in 2018.
“When I left, I remember she came and found me and we ended up having a really, really long conversation outside my trailer because she was so sad that I was leaving and wanted to talk about it,” Capshaw explained. “Maybe she wasn’t sad at all.”
Finch’s deception was unearthed in a 2022 Vanity Fair expose. Disney subsequently put Finch on “administrative leave” from “Grey’s” pending an HR investigation.
The writer later resigned from the show and fessed up to her lies.
She told the the Ankler in 2022 that her lies “got bigger and bigger and bigger and got buried deeper and deeper inside me.”
“Anatomy of Lies” revealed that Finch fabricated a bone cancer diagnosis, lied about her brother dying by suicide and her friend who died in the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooting, claimed that Oscar-winning actress Anna Paquin secretly gave her a kidney, and more.
Upon the docuseries’ release on Peacock on Oct. 15, Finch issued an apology for her actions on Instagram.
“I’ve given no one any reason to believe a word I say. I lied about so much; things so many people have been devastated by in real life. ‘I’m sorry’ feels like the smallest words compared to what I’ve done, yet they are the truest,” she said in her statement.
“I trapped myself in the addiction of lies, betraying and traumatizing my closest family, friends, and colleagues,” she added.