HBO’s CEO is speaking out on the immediate backlash received by the announcement of its planned series, Confederate.

Richard Pleper spoke at the Vanity Fair summit and said: “We screwed up in an important way.”

According to Deadline, Plepler said the show’s concept was about “showing what we call the thin line, the thin veneer of civilization–that’s what we were meant to explore. Where we screwed up was we tried to explain a complicated subject in a press release in three paragraphs.”

“A lie goes halfway around the world before the truth puts its boots on,” he continued, “and we bear some of the responsibility for that.”

The CEO said that the intent was to bring people together, not divide.

“We have a long tradition through our documentaries, through our film, of trying to bring the capacity of people to see other people in a more profound way, to the table, and we use our documentaries and our films to try to do that. Creative producers have always known that was part of our way, and that’s why they come to us to do that,” he said.

However, the apologies have just ended at the press release itself. It seems as if Confederate is still set to air as planned.

According to its official description that was initially released, the series “chronicles the events leading to the Third American Civil War. The series takes place in an alternate timeline, where the southern states have successfully seceded from the Union, giving rise to a nation in which slavery remains legal and has evolved into a modern institution. The story follows a broad swath of characters on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Demilitarized Zone — freedom fighters, slave hunters, politicians, abolitionists, journalists, the executives of a slave-holding conglomerate and the families of people in their thrall.”

In addition to Games of Thrones creators Benioff and Weiss as showrunners, two prominent black producers are on the team. Nichelle Spellman (Justified, The Good Wife) and Malcolm Spellman (Empire, and the upcoming Foxy Brown series on Hulu) are partnering with them as executive producers and writers on the series.