HBO and Max boss Casey Bloys is addressing reports that he used fake Twitter accounts to blast critics of the network’s series.

On Wednesday (November 1), Rolling Stone released text messages from Casey in which he suggested to HBO’s senior vice president of drama programming Kathleen McCaffrey that they should create a “secret army” Twitter accounts to respond to critics’ negative reviews of their shows.

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At the start of a presentation at HBO’s headquarters on Thursday (November 2) in New York City, Casey commented on the claims.

“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,” he began.

“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 come up with a very, very dumb idea to vent my frustration.”

After confirming the reports, Casey offered an apology.

“Obviously, six tweets over a year and a half is not very effective,” he said. “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.”

Check out HBO’s just-released slate of upcoming premiere dates, which includes Euphoria, House of the Dragon, and more!