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HBO executives reportedly ordered staff to respond to critics on social media with “secret” accounts between 2020 and 2021, as alleged in a new wrongful-termination lawsuit filed by a former executive assistant.
According to Rolling Stone, fake accounts to respond to negative reviews or network criticism were employed by HBO’s CEO Casey Bloys and senior vice president of drama programming Kathleen McCaffrey. Text messages uncovered in the lawsuit by former staffer Sully Temori reveal the genesis of the censure system, with Bloys first reacting to a tweet from a Vulture TV critic Kathryn VanArendonk, who took issue with the HBO period drama Perry Mason.
“Who can go on a mission,” Bloys messaged to McCaffrey, asking for a “mole” who the execs could keep at “arms length.” He added, “We just need a random to make the point and make [VanArendonk] feel bad.” McCaffrey allegedly passed the task on to Temori, saying “[Bloys] always texts me asking me to find friends to reply… is there a way to create a dummy account that can’t be traced to us to do his bidding.”
In six instances, messages between Bloys and McCaffrey show a formulation of responses that were later posted nearly verbatim by seemingly random, anonymous accounts, or their “secret army” as they were referred to by the pair. Following a negative review of the 2021 Joss Whedon sci-fi series The Nevers by Rolling Stone TV critic Alan Sepinwall, McCaffrey told Temori “Casey is looking for a tweeter … he’s mad at Alan Sepinwall.”
“Can our secret operative please tweet at Alan’s review: ‘Alan is always predictably safe and scared in his opinions.’ And then we have to delete this chain right? Omg I just got scared lol.” The report traced the still-standing comment, posted identically via Twitter from the newly-created account of a vegan mom in Texas.
Sepinwall was targeted again for a middling review of Mare of Easttown, when McCaffrey reached out to Temuri saying, “His highness needs another one,” McCaffrey wrote. “We need our friend to call out Alan for Mare.” Bloys’ suggested response allegedly was, “Alan missed on Succession and totally misses here because he is busy virtue signaling.” The same new account commented the exact sentiment later that day.
In a statement, a spokesperson for HBO shared, “HBO intends to vigorously defend against Mr. Temori’s allegations. We are not going to comment on select exchanges between programmers and errant tweets.”
Temori’s wrongful-termination lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court in July. While working for the company between 2015 and 2021, Temori claims he was the recipient of discrimination and harassment based on his sexual orientation and a mental health disability. He was terminated in October 2021 while working as a script coordinator on The Idol. The complaint is directed toward HBO, McCaffrey, HBO’s head of drama Francesca Orsi, Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye, and two additional producers from The Idol.
