Drag Race’s Gottmik Revealed He Was Contacted For Hulu’s Genderswapping Hellraiser Film
The LGBTQ+ community has been loyal fans of the horror genre for decades. By now, you surely must know that some of the greatest horror icons have been created by gay men! Drag Queens are essentially the peanut butter to horror movies’ jelly. Aside from maybe Heidi Klum, it’s clear the best Halloween costumes, spooky or campy, tend to come from drag personas who even make their haunting looks a part of their regularly scheduled gimmicks and shows. On RuPaul’s Drag Race, we’ve boo’ed alongside Sharon Needles as the first ‘spooky’ queen to take the crown and have since seen many been typecast as Needles in future seasons. The latest, most successful run thus far of the Drag Race alumni to show off his love for the genre throughout is season thirteen top finisher and first transmaculine drag queen, Gottmik (Kade Gottlieb). Gottmik’s eye popping looks served him into a top-four placement on his season that caught the attention of what could only be every horror fan’s beautiful nightmare.
According to Entertainment Weekly, after donning two Hellraiser-inspired outfits in the grand finale, Gottmik was approached on the low by the behind-the-scenes gatekeepers of the upcoming Hellraiser film heading to Hulu. Not only is that incredibly exciting, but he was asked to audition as the titular Hell Priest character himself, Pinhead! Yes, THE star of the film franchise who has continued to terrorize our dreams since the character was first portrayed by horror icon, Doug Bradley, back in the ‘80s. While the twenty-four-year-old drag queen ultimately didn’t land the role, perhaps due to inexperience and being shockingly younger than we would assume Pinhead to be, he still hopes to create another Hellraiser-inspired outfit to wear to the film premiere. Gottmik tells:
“When they saw my Hellraiser [look], they gave me the audition for Pinhead. I did [audition]! But I wasn’t menacing enough! I had to read a bunch, I was in my apartment, against the wall, full-on trying to be Pinhead, pretending to pull needles out of my head, just going in! It was so funny! I wanted to be Pinhead more than anything in my soul, but, also, I’m like, I get that. I mean, at least let me walk on the carpet in that look! I’ll make a new one! I just want to be there. I’ll just be in the background next to Pinhead!”
The rebooted version of Hellraiser is heading directly to streaming via Hulu and will be helming from production company, Spyglass Media Group, directed by David Bruckner and written by Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski. Surprisingly, their take on Pinhead is going to be a much different look. In this reboot, Pinhead will be female, so we’re getting a genderswap of evil entities, and Odessa A’Zion is set to star as the film’s should-be Final Girl. Can we please at least get a cameo from criminally underrated Scream Queen, Ashley Laurence AKA Kirsty Cotton, who survived Pinhead three times in the original franchise?! Plenty of us would open the Lament Configuration ourselves for the opportunity to see her take on Pinhead just once more – and in modern day 2021?! Even better!
The Hellraiser franchise – including Pinhead and the other devilishly petrifying Cenobites – was created by openly gay writer and director, Clive Barker. Barker, never shy to gore-horror, has found success already on Hulu with his 2020 horror film, Books of Blood, although there is currently no word if he’ll be involved in this film reboot or the Hellraiser series which is in the pipeline at HBO. We’ve got a ton of hellraising horror heading our way, folks!
Writer’s Note A: This is the opinion of one Instinct Magazine contributor and does not reflect the views of Instinct Magazine itself or fellow contributors.
Source: Entertainment Weekly, Dread Central
