Jamie Clayton dives into horror as Pinhead in Hulu's 'Hellraiser': 'I had no idea how sexy it was'

Pinhead the iconic '80s horror-movie villain is a gruesome ghoul all about the pleasure of pain. Pinhead the Twitter emoji is just sinfully adorable.

David Bruckner, director of the new “Hellraiser” (streaming now on Hulu), was the first to tell star Jamie Clayton – the newest Hell Priest – about her cartoon counterpart on Twitter. “I was like, ‘What?!’ ” says Clayton, who then informed her followers about the little figure conjured by using the hashtag #Hellraiser: “Listen up. If you do this, it is the cutest thing ever. Ever.”

Clayton's Pinhead is way more terrifying. A trans actress best known for her role in Netflix’s “Sense8,” she seizes her spooky side to take on a new version of the twisted being. (Doug Bradley played Pinhead in eight "Hellraiser" movies, including Clive Barker’s 1987 original film.) Bruckner’s reimagining centers on a struggling addict (Odessa A’zion) who comes into possession of an ancient puzzle box and summons the sadistic Cenobites and their eerily serene, torturing queen Priest.

Fall horror preview: Peep these 15 new film to prep for Halloween

“I was very intimidated to step into this role but also up for the challenge,” says Clayton, 44, who found Pinhead to be an enormously taxing role, physically and emotionally. She weathered “incredibly hot and restricting” prosthetics and mined the “well of my life and all of the good and the bad things that I've been through, putting that all into a pot and casting a spell and hoping that it worked.”

Raised in San Diego, Clayton was “a total scaredy-cat” who avoided horror in her younger years, so she had never seen the original “Hellraiser” until the night before she taped her audition. “I had no idea how sexy it was,” says Clayton, who researched Barker, his novella “The Hellbound Heart“ (the basis for "Hellraiser") "and how he wrote that from his experiences going to BDSM clubs in New York."

From the start, Bruckner wanted to cast a woman as the new Pinhead, and when he watched Clayton’s first read, “she just scared the hell out of me," says the filmmaker, who directed 2020’s “The Night House.” Once filming started and Clayton would arrive on the Serbian “Hellraiser” set, “you would often feel a hush fall over the crew and you knew you were in the presence of royalty. It can be quite intimidating to work with Jamie when she's in full Pinhead design.”

From 'The Shining' to 'The Birds': 25 horror movies to watch before you DIIIIIIIIIIIIE

Bruckner helped her understand the character's body placement and “the stillness of the head,” Clayton recalls, as well as what the Priest would be feeling: “The sensuality, the hunger perhaps, or the disappointment.”

But being Pinhead wasn’t easy. Clayton recalls “the crying, the laughing, the screaming, the panic attacks (and) the tiny sips of water” while in her villainous garb, and because inhabiting the role was “a deep place to go to,” she would stay in it for long periods of time. “I isolated myself from the cast and from everyone else. If they were moving the camera around or switching a light or a battery, I would just face a wall and sort of meditate.”

USA TODAY is starting a book club: Why we want to read Stephen King's 'Fairy Tale' with you

Listening to music, everything from Nine Inch Nails to Prince to The Sisters of Mercy, helped her dive into the Pinhead mind-set daily. “Darker things mixed with sexy, fun things like Depeche Mode’s ‘Personal Jesus.’ I mean, why not? It's perfect,” Clayton says. Coming out of it, though, was tougher. “The hardest thing I've learned overall as an actor is to not take it home with me. When I started my career, I had a really hard time doing emotional scenes and then not having it stay with me for weeks and days.”

So she stayed in therapy while in Serbia. Bath bombs helped, too, as did the Schweppes Bitter Lemons, Aperol spritzes and Jaffa Cakes. “It's about giving yourself the treats that you need,” says Clayton, who also has appeared in “The Neon Demon” and on TV's “Designated Survivor” and “The L Word: Generation Q.”

How can Winnie the Pooh be made a killer in 'Blood and Honey'? The public domain, explained

The horror genre is rife with final girls but not many memorable female villains, and Clayton says it feels “so special” to inhabit the next incarnation of a scary-movie legend like Pinhead.

Being trans, "there's just this idea that I'm not allowed to play certain things or that I can't play certain things,” Clayton says. “Hellraiser” was “just one of those beautiful moments (with) something I never thought I'd be allowed to do, but they opened the door and they allowed me in, and I was able to do what I do. And it was good,” she adds with a laugh.

“It means the world to me just to be given the opportunity because it's like, yeah, look, I can do this. Next, I'll play like a lawyer in space. I don't know, but I can do it all!”

10 must-see movies coming out this fall: From 'Hocus Pocus 2' to Dwayne Johnson's 'Black Adam'

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Hellraiser': Jamie Clayton makes Pinhead her own in Hulu horror film