HBO and Max CEO and Chairman Casey Bloys apologized to TV critics on Thursday for using fake Twitter accounts to respond to negative reviews of HBO series after a report was published on Wednesday , which revealed Bloy’s past behavior.
“Anyone who knows me knows that as a programmer I have a great passion for the shows we choose. And the people who make them and the people who work on them,” Bloys said Thursday morning at the start of a presentation at HBO’s New York headquarters, an event to promote HBO and Max’s upcoming programming that has been planned since October . 16. “I want the shows to be great. I want people to love them. I want you all to love them. It’s very important to me what you all think of the shows. If you think about it and then think about 2020 and 2021, I’m working from home and scrolling through Twitter an unhealthy amount. And I have a very, very stupid idea to vent my frustration.”
Bloys continued: “Of course, six tweets over a year and a half is not very effective. But I apologize to the people mentioned in the leaked emails and texts. Obviously no one wants to be part of a story they have nothing to do with. But as many of you know, I’ve also made strides in using DMs over the last few years. So if I have a problem with something in a review or have a problem with something that I see, a lot of you are kind enough to ask me back and forth and I think that’s probably a much healthier approach to that. But we’ll talk more about that and you can ask me anything you want in the Q&A. I just wanted to get this out there.”
From there, the HBO boss began the presentation with footage from the upcoming season of True Detective: Night Country.
Bloys’ comments come a day after Rolling Stone published a report on a lawsuit brought by former employee Sully Temori against the executive and HBO, alleging he was wrongfully terminated.
Although not part of the lawsuit itself, Rolling Stone referred to alleged text messages from 2020 and 2021 between Bloys and SVP of Drama Kathleen McCaffrey. In the alleged text exchange, Bloys and McCaffrey repeatedly discussed using fake Twitter accounts to respond to critics who made negative comments about HBO series such as “Perry Mason” and “Mare of Easttown.” According to Rolling Stone, these text messages provided by Temori were reviewed and verified using their metadata.
Temori, who was an executive assistant at the time, claims he was instructed to set up a Twitter account for this purpose, which he did, and attributed it to the wrong person, Kelly Shepard (a self-proclaimed vegan Texas mom). Temori has sent tweets from this account in response to critics’ negative reviews.
Additionally, Temori told Rolling Stone that, at Bloys’ request, he left anonymous comments on some Deadline articles in response to other users’ negative comments about HBO series and executives.
Temori’s lawsuit also names McCaffrey, HBO drama executive Francesca Orsi, Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye and two producers of his now-cancelled HBO drama “The Idol.” Temori claims he was mistreated on the set of that series when he became the project’s script coordinator in 2021, a position to which he was transferred from his role as executive assistant.