In October 2021, after filming wrapped, Jamie Clayton was revealed to have portrayed Pinhead, while Brandon Flynn, Goran Višnjić, Drew Starkey, Adam Faison, Aoife Hinds, Selina Lo and Hiam Abbass were unveiled as supporting cast.
One of the biggest talking points around the 2022 Hellraiser reboot was the latest ieration of iconic horror presence Pinhead would be female. Trans actress Jamie Clayton, the actor behind the Hell Priest/Pinhead, is a woman and uses feminine pronouns, as is the Hellraiser 2022 Pinhead.
In 2022, David Bruckner's Hellraiser reboot gained attention for its casting of actress Jamie Clayton in the iconic role of Pinhead, the leader of the cenobites. Now, Bruckner has revealed how the original Hellraiser book inspired him to cast Pinhead as a woman.
Even the agonizing dispatch of Serena (Hiam Abbass), Voight's weary assistant, seems inconsequential since her personality is neither reflected in establishing scenes nor in her seemingly interminable showdown with the Cenobites.
The Actress Who Plays Pinhead In Hulu's Hellraiser Is Gorgeous In Real Life
Why is Pinhead female in New Hellraiser?
The original book that it's based on, The Hellbound Heart, was suggestive of a female Pinhead, and the comic books also explored the idea. There's also plenty of fan art, wonderful works that all theorized the possibility of Pinhead as a woman. So it only felt appropriate to us.
Hellraiser was initially banned in Ontario by the Ontario Film and Video Review Board. By a 3-2 majority vote, the film was deemed "not approved in its entirety as it contravenes community standards". It was banned because of its "brutal, graphic violence with blood-letting throughout, horror, degradation and torture".
Freddy is a member of the Cenobite council and the rival of Laughing Jack. He is also the most feared and dreaded enforcer of Zalgo, even more so than Pinhead. Freddy is played by Robert Englund.
Kirsty reappears in Boom! Studios' Hellraiser comic series, set roughly twenty years after the events of the third film. By issue #8, she becomes a Cenobite, a female Pinhead, as the original Pinhead becomes human again.
However, 20 years after her first encounter with the Cenobites, Kirsty agrees to take Pinhead's place in Hell as the Hell Priest after losing everyone she's ever cared about - becoming a Cenobite crafted based on his original style, and the new favorite of Leviathan.
They are revealed to be former humans who have been converted into Cenobites by the supernatural power native to their home dimension; the source of that power is shown to be a deity named Leviathan ("the god of flesh and desire"), which appears as a massive, rotating lozenge with patterns of LeMarchand's box on its ...
We were exploring alternatives to that." Thus, six new Cenobites, not including Clayton's, were introduced: a new design of The Chatterer (Jason Liles), The Gasp (Selina Lo), The Weeper (Yinka Olorunnife), The Mother (Gorica Regodic), The Asphyx (Zachary Hing) and The Masque (Vukasin Jovanovic).
Merkova is one of few cenobites to have a lover, Pinhead, others being Female Cenobite who was also with Pinhead, Alastor and Chalkis and Sculptress and "My Sweet".
Because of the iron pins that has been nailed deep into his head, Pinhead is assumed to be in a perpetual state of pain, a pain that he has since his transformation from human to cenobite gotten used to and seems to derive pleasure from it. This allows him to endure extreme amounts of pain without slowing down.
The film stars Natalie Portman, Helena Bonham Carter, Ralph Fiennes and Colin Farrell, with Doug Bradley, Kate Beckinsale, Ken Kirzinger and Doug Jones as the iconic Cenobites from Hell.
All the evidence to me shows that Kirsty and Pinhead admire and do to an extent love each other. A kind of Romeo and Juliet thing going on, but even more of a horrific way of being in love.
Because Frank didn't actually understand and desire all that Hell was offering. Frank thought he was going to get endless pleasure on his terms. Frank was an amateur, a tourist, a dabbler.
We knew we wanted Pinhead to be a woman. Jamie was just the right person for the role. A person's identity can be really exciting for a role in many ways, but I have to emphasize that Jamie absolutely killed, that's how we got there".
According to an interview in the book Taking Shape II, the Michael Myers (AKA The Shape) cenobite would have had his mask permanently affixed to his skin and had his arms replaced with knives.
Edward, then, is a Cenobite, which is why he has scissors instead of hands, he's so pale, and he wears black leather clothes that look very similar to the ones the Cenobites usually wear.
The Cenobites are disfigured, sexless, sadomasochistic entities tasked with capturing whoever solved the riddle of the demonic puzzle box known as Lament Configuration and submitting them to extreme physical torture, an act meant to reveal all of the hidden pleasures of intense pain.
Hellraiser has since become a queer horror classic for numerous reasons, according to Riley Wade of Horror Obsessive. The work's gay author/director has been hailed as a master of the counter-cultural “splatterpunk” literary genre.
So the point of “Hellraiser” is to understand three things: Your actions have consequences. They can be good or bad and can affect people in good or bad ways. The first thing you never do is do something without thinking about what could happen.
Again, not that the Cenobites are particularly differentiated by gender anyway, but in The Hellbound Heart, Pinhead, who is referred to only with “it” pronouns, is described as having a voice that is “light and breathy — the voice of an excited girl,” per Dread Central.
