Why Rainn Wilson Regrets His ‘Backstrom’ Twitter Stunt

This story first appeared in the Feb. 20 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.

Rainn Wilson, generally a whiz on social media (he has 4 million Twitter followers) has learned a hard lesson in how not to tweet. The Backstrom star designed a stunt to support the Jan. 22 premiere of his Fox series, asking followers to tweet photos of themselves in front of their TVs during the debut, but it backfired.

“I enlisted some friends to help me, and we retweeted people’s pictures of them watching Backstrom live. It was insane — absolutely insane. I probably retweeted 4,000 people and lost anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 followers who were so annoyed of the retweets,” Wilson told THR. “I’m not sure if it was worth it.”