Game of Thrones writer reveals the show's early challenges

At a glance:

• Bryan Cogman wrote Game of Thrones season one episode 104, "Cripples, Bastards, and Broken Things," which premiered 15 years ago on May 8.
• HBO was skittish about the show's fantasy elements early on, and Cogman pushed back with his Bran Stark dream sequence despite pressure to tone it down.
• Cogman credits the show's survival to "the right people being there," the network taking a chance, and the world wanting it.

A writer looks back on his first episode

Bryan Cogman took to Bluesky on May 8, 2026 to mark the 15th anniversary of the first Game of Thrones episode he ever wrote: season one's "Cripples, Bastards, and Broken Things." The episode, which aired in 2011, turned 15 that very weekend, and Cogman said he felt compelled to share a thread about his early days on the HBO series even though he no longer works for the network. He had originally served as the show's "in-house 'expert'" — the person tasked with creating accessible documents for family trees, character relationships, and world-building lore. That behind-the-scenes role eventually led showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss to ask him to help break the season, and then to give him a writing credit on that very episode, which he initially assumed was just a "simple training exercise."

Cogman described the atmosphere on set when Thrones was first shot in 2009. HBO was still relatively new to genre television, and the network was nervous about leaning fully into fantasy elements. He even characterized the production as "scrappy" compared to other then-running HBO dramas like Boardwalk Empire. Despite significant pressure to keep the fantastical elements in check, Cogman said he decided to "fuck it, I'll write it anyway" and produced a version of Bran Stark's dream sequence that was "not too fantastical, but enough to see where we were going."

How the writing room came together

At the time Cogman joined season one, he had no formal writing experience and was hoping to eventually become a staff writer on the show. But Benioff and Weiss had been instructed by HBO to bring on freelancers, so Cogman was selected from that initial season one staff alongside George R.R. Martin and longtime Buffy writer Jane Espenson. Cogman expressed deep gratitude toward Benioff and Weiss for taking a chance on him, but he also pointed to HBO's broader culture at the time, where "creatives and execs truly felt like collaborators."

The episode's shooting also marked Cogman's unofficial debut as an on-set producer. Weiss and Benioff wanted him in that role, and he later officially graduated to producer while still writing for subsequent seasons. Today Cogman serves as a consulting producer on Amazon's Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power, and he has described Game of Thrones as his "film school [that] spoiled me for life," adding that he "learned everything I know about writing and production from being in its trenches."

Why the show nearly didn't happen

Cogman closed his thread by acknowledging that Game of Thrones was "very close to not happening in the early days for multiple reasons." He credited the final outcome to three converging factors: the right people being in place, the network betting on the material, and an audience that turned out to want it. "So, Happy Birthday, Game of Thrones! What is Dead May Never Die," he wrote.

The reflection underscores how precarious the path from page to screen can be for prestige genre television, and how much rides on the chemistry between a creative team and a network willing to take a calculated risk.

Tags

• Game of Thrones
• Bryan Cogman
• HBO
• David Benioff
• D.B. Weiss
• Bran Stark
• Rings of Power