In a new documentary that premiered January 25 at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, “Pee-wee as Himself,” Paul Reubens, the actor behind the iconic character, officially comes out.
Reubens, who passed away from cancer at 70 in 2023, spoke to fans publicly about his illness in July of that year. “Please accept my apology for not going public with what I’ve been going through for the past six years,” he posted to a social media account.
On the surface of many people’s minds, Reubens was Pee-wee. The character, quirky, hapless at times, and seemingly innocent, he was an inspired creation from a relationship the actor had when he was first starting out.
After growing up in Sarasota, Florida, Reubens moved to Los Angeles, where he became a part of the Groundlings comedy troupe. While a part of the group, the fledgling player dated a man named Guy, whose mannerisms would become the ’80s pop culture icon we all know.
In a article reported by The New York Post, Reubens recalled Guy would say things like “Mmmm! Buttery” in “a Yoda-like brogue.” The unique vocal style of the former partner became one of the core features the character Pee-wee Herman would put on display whenever on screen.
From that meeting on, throughout his career, Reubens would carry Guy with him through the Pee-wee persona, starting with a stage show the actor put on in L.A. Titled “The Pee-wee Herman Show,” the production ran for five months, which from there was taped for a HBO special that premiered in 1981, bringing fame and acclaim to Reubens. From appearances throughout the country at comedy clubs, to occasional appearances on late-night talk shows like “Late Night With David Letterman” and box office stardom starting with 1985’s “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure,” Reubens became inseparable from the role in the public eye.
That is likely why controversies like the indecent exposure charge for masturbating in an adult theater in 1991 rattled the general public. Despite that, Reubens did continue to acquire memorable parts that still endure to this day: Lock in Tim Burton’s “Nightmare Before Christmas,” and Derek Foreal in the Ted Demme-directed cocaine crime drama “Blow,” Even though those parts proved his versatility, the public always knew the Pee-wee persona before the man himself.
In Reuben’s own words, that is the point of the making of the film about the actor’s life and the decades that made up his career. “More than anything, the reason I wanted to make a documentary was for people to see who I really am, and how painful and dreadful it was to be labeled something I wasn’t,” Reubens says in the documentary, the Post reports. “To be labeled a pariah; to have people be scared of you, or untrusting.”
As for the secrets of his life being locked away until his passing, the film’s premiere to the public at large and his words give purpose to a host of previously unknown aspects of his life.
While he had his relationships out of view of the wider world, Reubens says his career became his focus, but there was also a lot of homophobia he had internalized. “I was secretive about my sexuality even to my friends [out of] self-hatred or self-preservation,” he states in the documentary. “I was conflicted about sexuality. But fame was way more complicated.”
“I was out of the closet, and then I went back in the closet,” Reubens also added in the documentary, driving home the complexity of his two identities. “I wasn’t pursuing the Paul Reubens career; I was pursuing the Pee-wee Herman career.”
Regardless of how well he attempted to hide himself, when asked point-blank about his thoughts on LGBTQ culture, a response was much easier to come by. In 2010, around the time when Reubens revived his stage show in Los Angeles, The Advocate was able to interview him, albeit in the Pee-wee persona. After mentioning that the actor had once married a bowl of fruit salad on “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” the interviewer asked if Herman supported marriage equality, which had yet to become a law in the United States. Speaking through his Herman voice, the actor made sure the public that loved him knew he did.
“Pee-wee As Himself,” a two-part documentary, is slated for a Spring 2025 premiere on HBO/Max.