Comedian Guy Branum gets a sneak peek at the premiere script for Game of Thrones season 8
By Dan Selcke
Game of Thrones season 7 is still months away, and we’re all eager to see what twists and turns it brings. But there’s one lucky guy who may already know a bunch of them: comedian Guy Branum, who claimed to have gotten a look at the script for the season 8 premiere episode when he happened to sit near showrunner Dan Weiss on a plane.
A word before we go further: this is just a fun story. Nothing is revealed. There’s something that maybe, under the most liberal of definitions, could be considered a SPOILER of the smallest kind for season 8 in there, but nothing you weren’t expecting.
So here’s what happened: Branum was at the recent South by Southwest festival, where he gave a preview of his hosting gig on Talk Show the Game Show, which premieres on TruTV April 5. As you may recall, Game of Thrones showrunners Weiss and David Benioff were also at SXSW, where they revealed the writing lineup for season 8: Dave Hill will write Episode 1, Bryan Cogman’s on Episode 2, and Benioff and Weiss will take the remaining four.
As he tells it on his Pop Rocket podcast (skip to 11:25 for the story), Branum found himself sitting near Weiss on the return flight to Los Angeles. Only he didn’t realize it was Weiss at first — he just thought it was some guy with a laptop working on a screenplay. Bored, he did what any of us would do: he peeked. “Because your instinct is, ‘This is his shitty screenplay. Why don’t I look at it?'”
Per Branum, it was the script for the premiere of Game of Thrones season 8 — Weiss was putting notes on it. “I understand that there’s nothing I can do with [the information] that isn’t creepy or skeevy, but I did sure as fuck read [what I saw of the script],” he said. “It was [the] first episode, so they were essentially recapping everything that happens in the season that is to come.”
(Photo by John Sciulli/Getty Images for Turner)
Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view), Branum’s co-hosts couldn’t dig any information out of him. He did drop one thing, though. They asked him to name one word he saw in the script. His answer: “Winterfell.”
So there you go: Winterfell probably appears in Game of Thrones season 8. Mark it down. In the meantime, maybe Branum will spill secrets if we ask him super nicely.
Branum’s comedy album, Effable, is available on iTunes.
Also, stick around for the rest of the Pop Rocket podcast and the hosts discuss how awesome Bella Ramsey is as Lyanna Mormont. Always worth discussing.