HBO and Max CEO and President Casey Blois apologized to television critics on Thursday for using fake Twitter accounts to respond to negative reviews of the HBO series, following Wednesday’s report that exposed Blois’ past behavior.
“For those of you who know me, you know I’m a programming executive, and I’m very interested in the shows we decide to make. The people who make them and the people who work on them,” Blois said Thursday morning at the start of a presentation at HBO’s New York headquarters, which will highlight the upcoming partnership between HBO and Max. is an event promoting programming, Oct. 16. “I want the shows to be great. I want people to love them. I want you all to love them. What you all think about the shows is very important to me. What you think about it. As I think about 2020 and 2021, I work from home and scroll through Twitter an unhealthy amount, and I come up with a very, very dumb idea to vent my frustration.
Blois continued: “Six tweets in a year and a half is not very useful. But I apologize to those 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, over the past couple of years I’ve improved my use of DMs. Now, when I do take issue with something in a review or take issue with something I see, many of you are gracious enough to engage with me back and forth, and I think that’s a very healthy way to do it. This. But we’ll talk more about that, and you can ask me anything you want in the Q&A. I just wanted to put it out there.
From there, the HBO president began the presentation with footage from the upcoming season of “True Detective: Night Country.”
Blois’ comments come a day later Rolling Stone published a story detailing a lawsuit filed against the executive and HBO from former employee Sully DeMory, who claims she was wrongfully fired.
Although not included in the lawsuit itself, Rolling Stone noted text messages between Bloys and SVP drama host Kathleen McCaffrey in 2020 and 2021. In alleged text exchanges, Bloys and McCaffrey repeatedly discussed using fake Twitter accounts to respond to critics who spoke negatively about HBO series including “Perry Mason” and “Mare of Easttown.” Rolling Stone says these text messages provided by Demory have been reviewed and verified through their metadata.
Demory, who was an administrative assistant at the time, says she was instructed to create a Twitter account for these purposes, which she did, and that it was a fake person named Kelly Shepherd (a self-described vegan Texan mom). Demory sent tweets from this account in response to critics’ negative reviews.
In addition, Demory told Rolling Stone that, at Blois’ request, he left anonymous comments on certain Deadline articles in response to other users’ negative comments about HBO series and executives.
Temori’s lawsuit also names McCaffrey, HBO president of drama Francesca Orsi, Abel “The Weeknd” Desfay and two producers of his now-cancelled HBO drama “The Idol.” Temori alleges she was mistreated on the series’ set after becoming a scripted coordinator on the show in 2021, and was moved from her executive assistant role.
