The addition of social media to the entertainment industry has certainly had its influence. Unfortunately, a new report claims that HBO boss Casey Bloys actually had staff members create fake Twitter accounts to troll critics.
This report, as shared via Rolling Stone, claims the events took place between June 2020 and April 2021. The publication claims to have had at least six different text messages between Bloys and SVP of drama programming Kathleen McCaffrey where they’d used burner accounts to harshly respond to TV critics after they gave negative reviews to HBO shows. Additionally, the texts were both reviewed and verified via the metadata attached.
Rolling Stone received these texts from former HBO staff member Sully Temori. Temori filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against HBO, McCaffrey, HBO head of drama Francesca Orsi, and Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye in addition to two producers of the series The Idol. Temori is said to have become a script coordinator on the series in August 2021 before they were laid off in October 2021. He was said to be one of the staff members asked to create a burner account by McCaffrey in June 2020.
It’s worth mentioning that the tweets are not actually part of Temori’s lawsuit, however. Rather, he claims to have been harassed and discriminated against by his bosses at HBO after disclosing a mental health diagnosis. This includes having been allegedly sexually harassed, with one unnamed employee said to have slapped his butt and “commenting about personal and sexual matters” due to Temori’s sexual orientation.
As shared via IndieWire, HBO refuses to comment on the tweets created by alleged fake accounts, though they denied the other allegations in the lawsuit:
“HBO intends to vigorously defend against Mr. Temori’s allegations. We are not going to comment on select exchanges between programmers and errant tweets,” an HBO spokesperson said. “We look forward to a full and fair resolution of this dispute. In the meantime, we wish Mr. Temori, a former HBO employee, well in his future endeavors.”
Stay tuned to ScreenGeek for any additional updates regarding the situation at HBO and Max as we have them.