A former CIA officer was quietly lurking in the Winterfell soup line during Sunday’s episode of HBO’s “Game of Thrones.”
That officer was former Deputy Director David S. Cohen, who made a surprise brief cameo as an unnamed resident of Winterfell.
While Cohen may have hoped his intelligence background would prompt show writers to cast him in a more prominent role — maybe that of a Faceless Man — he was ultimately given the job of playing a nondescript Northerner.
While Cohen did not have any lines, he was served a bowl of soup by Ser Davos Seaworth, played by actor Liam Cunningham, as Winterfell prepared for the impending arrival of the Night King and his army of the dead.
The CIA revealed Cohen’s cameo in a tweet.
“A perk of working for CIA is world travel. Apparently that sometimes extends to other realms…
“‘Little birds,’ be on the lookout for a former deputy director of ours wandering through #Westeros in tonight’s episode of #GameOfThrones,” the CIA tweeted, including a picture of Cohen in costume.
Cohen, who served as deputy director of the CIA under President Barack Obama from 2015 to 2017, responded to the agency’s tweet, joking that they had “blown his cover.”
But Cohen had actually hinted about the appearance on his own Twitter account last week.
“You seem to have good sources in Winterfell,” Cohen wrote in response to Playboy’s Washington correspondent who was first to report the planned cameo.
In an interview with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell Monday, Cohen said he asked his brother-in-law, who is a showrunner on the HBO show, if he could be an extra when they were celebrating Thanksgiving in 2017.
CNN and HBO share parent company WarnerMedia.