HBO CEO Casey Bloys Apologizes For ‘Very, Very Dumb Idea’ Of Ordering Assistant To Create Fake Twitter Accounts Targeting Critics

On November 2, Casey Bloys, the chief executive officer of both HBO and Max, announced HBO’s upcoming projects and confirmed reports that he and fellow executive Kathleen McCaffrey plotted to harass critics who wrote negative reviews of HBO’s shows, which came out during the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Text messages revealed in a court case stated that the executive was displeased with Kathryn VanArendonk, a Vulture television critic, who criticized the reliance on flashbacks in Perry Mason. Another message took aim at the television critic of Rolling Stone, Alan Sepinwall, who gave The Nevers a two-and-a-half star rating.

These accusations had been part of an unlawful termination lawsuit filed back in July by a former HBO executive assistant, who was first hired as a temporary employee.

The ex-assistant stated that he was given the task of creating fake social media profiles to harass critics.

“For those of you who know me, you know that 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,” Bloys said in a statement. “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. So when you think of that mindset, and then think of 2020 and 2021, I’m home, working from home and spending an unhealthy amount of scrolling through Twitter. And I came up with a very, very dumb idea to vent my frustration.”

He continued, “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 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, I DM many of you, and many of you are gracious enough to engage with me in a back-and-forth and I think that is probably a much healthier way to go about this. 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.”