I suspect the real reason she was cast was the fact that she was inexplicably popular in Game of Thrones and they're capitalizing on that. Movies and TV shows have always done that. You'll see one little kid get popular in something and suddenly they're the go-to kid who you see pop up in everything you watch for the next couple of years (Haley Joel Osment and Dakota Fanning, for example).
Her looking like Joseph Merrick was probably just mere happenstance. Although, judging by the other casting choices (Joel's black child, Joel himself being Latino, the out-of-shape mousey woman as a badass leader, Henry suddenly being portrayed as deaf for instance) I'm sure the creators just get a kick out of their attempt at subverting audience expectations with how open-mindedly diverse they are.
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