A Game of Thrones writer reveals the series’ early challenges

HBO Game of Thrones turned 15 last month and is understandably making people nostalgic, including those who worked on it.

In Bluesky, writer Brian Cogman looks back on his experience writing for the show when it was in its infancy. Its first episode was the fourth season of the first, « Cripples, Bastards, and Broken Things, » which itself is already 15 as of this weekend. Back when Thrones was first filmed in 2009, he served as an « in-house ‘expert' » creating accessible documents on family trees, characters, and the like. That work led him to help showrunners David Benioff and DB Weiss break the season, and later gave him writing duties on this episode, which he said at the time was simply a training exercise.

In the lengthy thread, Cogman discusses the process of filming the episode and one of his favorite moments in visualizing Bran Stark’s dreams. Some may remember Game of Thrones as HBO’s first foray into genre television, and as such the team and network were reticent to fully engage in these fantasy elements. (He even called Thrones « lackluster » compared to other shows on the network at the time such as Boardwalk Empire.) Despite « a lot of pressure » to play it down, he said « hell, I’m going to write it anyway » and came up with a version of the dream that « wasn’t too fantastic, but enough to see where we’re going.

At this point in his career, Cogman has no writing experience and hopes to become a writer for the series in future seasons. But because Benioff and Weiss had been told by HBO to hire freelancers, they cast him among the first-season staff, a team that also included George RR Martin and longtime Buffy writer Jane Espenson. While he’s extremely grateful to Benioff and Weiss for taking a chance on him, Cogman also credits the HBO environment back then, when « creators and performers really felt like collaborators. » Filming the episode was also his unofficial first outing as a producer on set. It was a role that Weiss and Benioff wanted for Cogman, and which he later officially completed while still writing for subsequent seasons.

Cogman is now a consulting producer The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, and thinks Thrones his « film school (it) spoiled me for life. I learned everything I know about writing and producing while in his trenches. GoT came very close to not happening in the early days for multiple reasons. In the end, it was a case of the right people being there to make it, the network taking a chance on us and the material, and the world wanting it. (…) So Happy Birthday, Game of Thrones! What is dead can never die.

Want more io9 news? See when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe in film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.