Peacock‘s new documentary series Anatomy of Lies dives into the rise and fall of former Grey’s Anatomy writer Elisabeth Finch, who, unbeknownst to many fans of the hit television show, conned her colleagues and loved ones into believing she was a cancer and abuse survivor.

The new doc is based on the work of Vanity Fair reporter Evgenia Peretz, who spoke to Finch’s former colleagues and her ex-wife, Jennifer Beyer, to uncover the true extent of her lies in a series of shocking exposés. Finch was hired to write on Grey’s in 2015 after she published an essay about being diagnosed with chondrosarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer. Her former colleagues, some of whom are interviewed in Anatomy of Lies, noted that Finch certainly used her growing web of lies to get ahead in the writer’s room, as many felt “impressed” that she managed to show up to work everyday.

But Finch’s lies eventually began to take new forms. She began stealing other people’s trauma for her own; at one point, she also used a lower-level colleague’s shocking revelation about their family to pen the Season 15 episode “Silent All These Years,” that went on to win awards. She also claimed to have been abused by her brother and lied about losing a friend in the 2018 shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue.

But the most shocking extent of her lies is revealed through her ex-wife, who was the first to sound the alarm and reach out to Shonda Rhimes about Finch. Beyer appears on camera with her children to reflect on the deeply parasitic relationship Finch struck up with her after they met at a treatment facility in 2019, where Finch learned about the abuse and trauma Beyer was escaping.

DECIDER recently spoke to executive producers Melanie Archer and Sarah Amos about how Anatomy of Lies peels back the curtain on Hollywood and Finch’s manipulation.

DECIDER: I would love to hear more about your process for adapting and bringing the story to screen.

SARAH AMOS: As soon as Evgenia started reporting this, we did know we wanted to bring it to screen. It’s such a visual story, and there are so many twists and turns and complexities to it, that we just knew there was more than was on the page. I mean, even just the fact that the article itself had to be a two-parter showed us that, like, oh, there’s a lot to unpack here … I think it was really important to us in making the documentary that it not just feel like a con story, that it not just feel like we were re-traumatizing people or gossiping about Hollywood. We wanted to delve into the larger emotions.

What was the process like getting Jennifer Beyer involved?

MELANIE ARCHER: For that, we go right back to the relationship that Evgenia developed during the writing of the Vanity Fair piece. The great thing about long-form documentary making is that you’d have time to develop that trust further. So, given that Vanity Fair Studios knew immediately that this was something they wanted to bring to screen, and given that if Evgenia had that relationship already, it was a process of working closely with the directors, but also our producers to make sure that that we created a safe space for Jen. But also that relationship and trust had evolved in that Jen was confident in our ability to tell her story, to bring the essence of her, and her journey, and her experience and her trauma to life on screen.

It was interesting to see how entwined her lies became with her work on the show, as seen in that award-winning episode “Silent All These Years.” What did you think of how her lies impacted this major primetime network television show?

AMOS: I think Mel and I take for granted, and people who work in this industry take for granted, that we know how Hollywood works, we know how a writer’s room works. But I do think this series will be an interesting window into that world because so much of television is pulled from personal experience. That is the fodder that most writers use. It all starts from some sort of lived experience. I think what people will find really interesting and what is so compelling is the degree to which Elisabeth was using her stories to then get ahead in Hollywood and to help make her really a leader in the writers room. It is both kind of an education and an interesting peel back of the curtain for Hollywood, but also a really interesting examination of how lies and and stories and and all of that can be used as a tool to get ahead.

ARCHER: I think that what the documentary does is it embeds you in a world of Hollywood in a way that the best shows do. It’s a world-building that perhaps takes you behind the curtain of something that you kind of think you know, but maybe you don’t. But as the series develops and the twists and turns pay out, actually, the person who exposes the lies is from outside Hollywood, and I think that points to Jen’s bravery. It points to the level to which her family was affected, but also that she was brave enough to have a voice.

In the documentary series, it says that you reached out to a couple of the stars and to Shonda Rhimes for their perspective. Have you heard any response or anything since since working on the doc?

AMOS: We don’t want to really get into too many specifics, but I think what we can say is we really did try to reach out to everyone who was involved in this story in any way, because it was really important to us, from a journalism standpoint, that everyone have an opportunity to speak. Obviously, for a lot of people, the story is still really fresh, and the effects of it within their world and lives and work is still very present. So we were really respectful of those who did not want to comment or who did not want to participate and kind of want to hold that respect for those who didn’t want to be a part of it. But we hope everyone who sees it, both those who were involved and those who were not, appreciate the care and work and what we did to try to tell as fair, honest, accurate and nuanced a version of this story as possible.

I know that Elisabeth has since confessed to lying about many of these things and apologized. Have you heard anything from her at all while making this doc?

AMOS: We reached out to her for comment and to do an interview. She declined to participate. We want to be respectful of the fact that she didn’t want to be a part of this and and so [we] don’t know much about where she is beyond the conversation we had with her team.

If you or someone you know is a victim of domestic abuse, help is available. Call the National Domestic Violence Hotline 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at 800-799-7233, or text START to 88788.