"We felt a kind of anticipation around the fans to reimagine the character," says Bruckner of the decision to cast Clayton, a trans woman. "We knew we wanted Pinhead to be a woman. Jamie was just the right person for the role.
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.