HBO Exec Casey Bloys Admits His Fake Tweets Aimed At TV Critics Were A “Very, Very Dumb Idea”

HBO‘s Casey Bloys is apologizing after a report claimed he orchestrated the use of fake Twitter accounts to bash TV critics who wrote unfavorable reviews of his network’s shows.

The HBO and Max CEO and chairman addressed critics on Thursday at the company’s New York headquarters, where he was hosting an event to promote upcoming programming.

“For those of you who know me, you know that I am a programming executive very, very passionate about the shows that we decide to do. And the people who do them and the people who work on them,” he said, per Variety.

Bloys continued, “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. When you think about that, and then think of 2020 and 2021, I’m working from home and doing an unhealthy amount of scrolling through Twitter. And I come up with a very, very dumb idea to vent my frustration.”

Bloys went on, “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, texts. Obviously, nobody wants to be part of a story that they have nothing to do with. But also, as many of you know, I have progressed over the past couple of years to using DMs.

“So now, when I take issue with something in a review, or take issue with something I see, many of you are gracious enough to engage with me in a back and forth and I think that is a probably a much healthier way to go about this,” he said. “But we’ll talk more about that, and you guys can ask me anything you want in the Q&A. I just wanted to put that out there.”

The CEO’s comments come after Rolling Stone published a report yesterday (Nov. 1) in which they said Bloys had created a “secret army” on Twitter to take on TV critics who disliked HBO programming.

In Rolling Stone‘s report, Bloys and Kathleen McCaffrey, HBO’s senior vice president of drama programming, are accused of  “trolling the television critics with snarky responses from a fake Twitter account — and dropping pro-HBO comments on trade publication stories.”

The fake tweets emerged from coverage of former HBO employee Sully Temori’s wrongful termination suit, which alleges he was mistreated while working on The Idol. Temori, who worked as an executive assistant before joining The Idol, claimed he was asked to create a fake Twitter account to reply to critics with negative reviews, and additionally was instructed to leave comments on certain Deadline articles about HBO series.