Within the remaining months earlier than his demise in July 2023, Paul Reubens obtained an opportunity to get a “message in on the final minute,” as he put it. Sitting down for over 40 hours of interviews for the HBO documentary Pee-wee as Himself, the actor, comic, and Pee-wee Herman creator got here out as homosexual, mentioned his “devastating” scandals, and provided new perception right into a life that he had at all times stored secret.
“I had many, many secret relationships,” Reubens says within the documentary, which premiered this week on the 2025 Sundance Movie Competition. “I used to be secretive about my sexuality even to my buddies [out of] self-hatred or self-preservation,” he says at one other level. “I used to be conflicted about sexuality. However fame was far more difficult.”
Pee-wee as Himself was first introduced in 2021, with Matt Wolf directing and Josh Safdie and Benny Safdie serving as govt producers. Reubens himself consented to the mission and spent “a number of hundred hours” discussing it with Wolf (per Selection), however stored his wrestle with most cancers secret to the filmmakers till days earlier than his demise.
In an audio recording despatched to Wolf throughout his remaining days, Reubens defined, “Greater than something, the rationale I needed to make a documentary was for folks to see who I actually am, and the way painful and dreadful it was to be labeled one thing I wasn’t. To be labeled a pariah; to have folks be petrified of you, or untrusting.”
Rising to fame within the early ‘80s along with his Pee-wee character, Reubens skilled appreciable success with 1985’s Pee-wee’s Massive Journey and the CBS Saturday morning present Pee-wee’s Playhouse. However after an arrest for indecent publicity in 1991, and one other in 2002 for possession of obscene materials that allegedly improperly depicted minors, he skilled a “devastating” fall from grace.
“Folks had by no means seen a photograph of me aside from Pee-wee Herman, and swiftly, I had a Charlie Manson mugshot,” he mentioned. “I misplaced management of my anonymity. It was devastating.”
Certainly, the media backlash had a long-lasting influence on Reubens. “It’s stunning what horrible, terrible stuff folks take into consideration me,” he says. “It’s nonetheless a major footnote … 30 years later I nonetheless really feel the results on a regular basis.”
Elsewhere within the documentary, Reubens particulars hardships the general public wasn’t aware about, like his wrestle with identification when Pee-wee Herman first took off. Revealing that sure mannerisms of the character had been impressed by a boyfriend of his named Man, Reubens defined that when his profession began gaining momentum, his private life went on the back-burner.
“I used to be out of the closet, after which I went again within the closet,” he says. “I wasn’t pursuing the Paul Reubens profession; I used to be pursuing the Pee-wee Herman profession … I hid behind an alter ego.”
As for Man — who formed Pee-wee’s character with campy sayings like “Mmmm! Buttery!” — Reubens recollects visiting him within the hospital as he was dying of AIDS. “To speak about seeing somebody at demise’s door… He most likely died a pair hours after that.”
Different matters tackled within the documentary are Reubens’ relationships with buddies like Debi Mazar and Phil Hartman, in addition to behind-the-scenes tales from numerous Pee-wee productions, and extra. The documentary will quickly change into accessible to stream on Max.
For extra, revisit our article celebrating Pee-wee’s Massive Journey, or Liz Shannon Miller’s shout-out to his hilarious demise scene from 1992’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer.