Paul Reubens Comes Out as Gay in Documentary
A new documentary features revealing interviews with the late Paul Reubens, best known as Pee-wee Herman, about his fall from grace.
Paul Reubens, better known as his on-screen persona “Pee-wee Herman,” came out posthumously in a recently released documentary.
The documentary, Pee-wee as Himself, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 23. It features Reubens — who died in July 2023 at age 70 — reflecting on his life and rumors about his sexuality.
Reubens discusses why he hid his sexuality after becoming famous in the 1980s for his portrayal of Pee-wee, a character Reubens developed as part of the Groundlings, a noted improvisational comedy troupe.
“I hid behind an alter ego,” Reubens says in the film, as first reported by The New York Post. “I spent my entire adult life hiding [that] I was a huge weed head. I was secretive about my sexuality even to my friends [out of] self-hatred or self-preservation. I was conflicted about sexuality. But fame was way more complicated.”
Pee-wee became nationally beloved as the title character in the Emmy Award-winning Saturday morning children’s television show, Pee-wee’s Playhouse, which ran from 1986 to 1990. As a result, Reubens decided to closet himself professionally.
“I was out of the closet, and then I went back in the closet,” Reubens says in the documentary, which is crafted from 40 hours of interviews done before his death. “I wasn’t pursuing the Paul Reubens career. I was pursuing the Pee-wee Herman career.”
Reubens recalls how he had “many, many secret relationships” at the height of his career. One of those relationships was with a man from Los Angeles named Guy, who reportedly inspired some of Pee-wee Herman’s most iconic catchphrases. Guy later died of AIDS.
The comedian also laments how his career came to a halt after his 1991 arrest for indecent exposure at an adult movie theater in Florida. Reubens pled no contest, meaning he refused to admit guilt, and avoided a criminal charge on his police record, but accepted 75 hours of community service as punishment.
CBS subsequently stopped airing re-runs of Pee-wee’s Playhouse, which Rubens had already decided would not return for a sixth season, and Toys “R” Us pulled Pee-wee merchandise from its shelves.
Reubens encountered more legal trouble in 2002 when he was arrested for alleged possession of child pornography, stemming from former Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo’s misconstruing the actor’s collection of vintage gay erotica as illicit material.
The pornography charges were later dropped in exchange for Reubens pleading guilty in 2004 to a misdemeanor obscenity charge, for which he was still required to register as a sex offender for three years.
The documentary — and subjects interviewed for it, such as his publicist, Kelly Bush Novak — largely portray the 2002 arrest and charges as a “homophobic witch hunt” stemming from prejudice towards Reubens over his sexual orientation.
“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 a recording made on the day before his death. “The moment I heard someone label me as — I’m just going to say it — a pedophile, I knew it was going to change everything moving forward and backwards.
“I wanted to talk about and have some understanding of what it’s like to be labeled a pariah, to have people scared of you, or unsure of you, or untrusting, or to look at what your intentions are through some kind of filter that’s not true,” Reubens says. “I wanted people to understand that occasionally, where there is smoke, there isn’t always fire.”
The two-part documentary is expected to air on HBO later this year.
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