On Bluesky, writer Brian Cogman recalled his experience writing for the show when it was in its infancy. His first episode was the fourth of season one, “Cripples, Bastards, and Broken Things”, which is now 15 years old as of this weekend. back when throne First shot in 2009, he served as an “in-house ‘expert'” who created accessible documents for family trees, characters, and the like. That work led to him helping showrunners David Benioff and DB Weiss pitch the season, and he was later assigned writing duties on the episode, which he thought at the time was just a simple training exercise.
I wasn’t going to go through the whole #GoT15 thing, because… well, I don’t work for HBO anymore (haha) but I’m so grateful to this show and its fans, I thought I’d post a little about the first episode I wrote – 104: ‘Cripples, Bastards, and Broken Things’… which premiered 15 years ago today… (continued)
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– Brian Cogman (@bryancogman.bsky.social) May 8, 2026 at 11:20 am
In the lengthy thread, Cogman discussed the episode’s shooting process and one of his favorite moments of imagining Bran Stark’s dreams. some will remember game of Thrones HBO’s first foray into genre television, and as such, the team and network were hesitant to delve into those fantasy elements. (he also called throne Was “bad” compared to other shows running on the network at the time Boardwalk Empire.) Despite “a lot of pressure” to tone it down, he said “Fuck it, I’ll write it anyway” and came up with a version of the dream that was “no”. Very Fantasy, but enough to see where we were going.”
At this stage of his career, Cogman had no writing experience and hoped to become a staff writer for the show in later seasons. But because HBO had asked Benioff and Weiss to bring in freelancers, they chose him to be on a staff that season, a team that also included George R.R. Martin and longtime buffy Author Jane Espenson. Along with being extremely grateful to Benioff and Weiss for the opportunity, Cogman also credited the environment at HBO at the time, when “creatives and executives really felt like colleagues.” Shooting the episode was also his unofficial first outing as an on-set producer. This was a role that Weiss and Benioff wanted for Cogman, and which he later officially graduated from when writing for future seasons.
Cogman is now a consulting producer Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power, and thinks throne His “film school”. [that] Ruined me for life. Everything I know about writing and producing, I learned while there. GoT was very close to not happening in the early days for many reasons. Ultimately, it was a case of the right people being there to do it, the network giving us and the material a chance, and the world wanting it. […] So, happy birthday, game of Thrones! what is dead may never die.”
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