According to Deadline, HBO CEO and Chairman Chief Casey Bloys (Less Than Perfect) has apologized for using fake Twitter accounts to troll television critics on social media. Recently he led off presentation about the upcoming year’s programming by addressing the recent Rolling Stone report that mentioned the trolling that was being done toward critics who didn’t like his show.
Bloys began the presentation at Warner Bros. Discovery headquarters in New York City by saying, “We’re here to talk about ’24, but I thought we might as well talk about it up front. For those of you who know me, you know I am a programming executive who is very, very passionate about the shows that we decide to do and the people who do them and the people who work on them. I want the shows to be great. I want people to love them. I want you all to love them. It’s very, very important to me what you think of all the shows.”
He said, “So when you think of that mindset, and think of 2020 and 2021, I am home, working from home, spending an unhealthy amount of time scrolling through Twitter and I come up with a very, very dumb idea to vent my frustration. Obviously, six tweets over a year and a half is not very effective. But I do apologize to the people who were mentioned in the leaked emails and texts. Obviously, nobody wants to be part of a story they had nothing to do with.”
He continued, “But also as many of you know, I have progressed over the past couple of years to using DMs. Now, when I take issue with something in a review or take issue with something I see, I DM many of you and many of you are gracious enough to engage with me in a back and forth. It’s a probably a much healthier way to go about this.”
According to Deadline, it was reported that Bloys had taken issue with the reviews from Vulture‘s, Kathryn VanArendonk, Rolling Stone‘s Alan Sepinwall, and New York Times’ James Poniewozik. This led to him suggesting to HBO’s SVP of drama programming Kathleen McCaffrey that someone should respond to these critics through Twitter. The responses were generated by an assistant named Sully Temori. Temori is now suing HBO due to wrongful termination back in 2021 over being given the task of writing the responses. The old tweets are not listed under the current lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.