Hellraiser star Jamie Clayton went to a 'dark place' playing Pinhead

Talking to EW over Zoom, Jamie Clayton is a delightful and effervescent presence. But it was a different story when the actress strode onto the set of director David Bruckner's new Hellraiser film dressed to the pointy nines as the horror franchise's villainous, pain-loving Hell Priest, a.k.a. "Pinhead."

"I'm not Method per se, but I was in character from the moment I would leave the makeup trailer," says Clayton. "Walking on set was funny. David's described it as this hush would fall over the crew. I'm very used to walking on set and everybody being like, 'Hi!' and I'm like, 'Hi!' On this, now, I walk on set, and I'm really quiet, and I'm like, 'Don't you f---king talk to me.' And I would stay in character while we were filming, while they were setting up different shots, moving the cameras around, fixing the set, doing the things. I had to stay in it because it's a heavy place to go to, and so to go that deep, you can't just come back when they're resetting a shot and have a sip of Schweppes Bitter Lemon and then go back in. I had to just stay there."

Clayton is happy to admit that she was not an expert in the Hellraiser movies, and its Pinhead-led Cenobites, before auditioning for the role.

Rebecca Sapp/Getty; Spyglass Media Group Jamie Clayton and Jamie Clayton in Hellraiser 2022

"I mean, it's one of the most iconic franchises, and the images of the Cenobites are something that's sort of burned into my memory bank, but I hadn't seen [the films]," she says. "When I was a teenager, oh my God, I was a big scaredy-cat. I was running around my room in my house listening to Cindy Lauper and Janet Jackson and Stacey Q. I wasn't popping in VHS tapes of horror films. It wasn't until I was in my twenties that I really got into [those kinds of films]. Because I was a makeup artist and I wanted to get into special effects and so I started really getting into horror films then."

Clayton's previous acting credits include Sense8 and Designated Survivor, but the actress thought she had little chance of landing the role of Pinhead, who was originally played by Doug Bradley in Clive Barker's franchise-inaugurating 1987 film Hellraiser.

"I didn't think I'd ever book it!" she says. "It was one of those things where I thought to myself, there's no way I'm going to book this. My manager always says to me, 'Don't play casting director,' and so I read the script, and I was completely floored because it's so good. Then I watched the original, and I had no idea how sexy it was. I thought to myself, oh s---, like, this is a really good script, the original is so sexy, I want to do this! So I hired my friend, who I always hire, to coach me on my audition, and she gave me really fun, interesting direction. I sent the tape in and I got a callback! [Laughs] I couldn't believe it. Then I met David during the callback, and he's everything I could ask for in a director, just everything. I wanted nothing more than to play this character."

So why did Bruckner cast Clayton as his film's lead Cenobite?

Spyglass Media

"She was scary as hell!" says the director. "Honestly, it was the most frightening read that I had seen by a mile. Also, Doug's performance is so iconic and so incredible and nuanced in all its own ways, we knew that we couldn't rip it off. Like, you can't do an impression of Doug; it's not going to work. We needed a different voice, and we didn't know what that was; we didn't know how to get there necessarily, so we looked at a lot of people, and from the beginning, Jamie had this sensuality; she was expressing the desires of the [character] in a way that maybe was a little counter to Doug's reservation. You know, she was revealing yourself more, and there was intrigue and curiosity, and she didn't outwardly try to intimidate so much as be this kind of silky evil presence. Like, she's sexy, I'm drawn to her, she's beautiful, yet at any given moment, she might throw chains at my head."

Clayton reveals that she'd be happy to throw more chains as Pinhead in a second Hellraiser film if the one proves a hit with audiences.

"Oh my goodness, if people are chuffed with it enough that they would want me to do it again, I mean, yeah!" she says. "I don't know if anybody's going to like it. I'm so scared! Argh!!!"

Hellraiser hits Hulu on Oct. 7. Watch Clayton and Bruckner talk about the film above and see the film's trailer below.

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