Pee-wee Herman star Paul Reubens posthmously comes out as gay
Pee-wee Herman star Paul Reubens came out as gay in a new posthumous documentary about the comic, who died of cancer in 2023.
Pee-wee Herman star Paul Reubens came out as gay in a new posthumous documentary about the comic.
The legendary comedian - who died of cancer aged 70 in July 2023 - spent 40 hours with director Matt Wolf to give his final interviews for two-part film 'Pee-wee as Himself', which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Thursday (23.01.25), and spoke movingly about his sexuality and seeing his career blighted by scandal.
According to the New York Post's Page Six column, Paul told how he had a boyfriend named Guy from Echo Park in Los Angeles, whose vocal tics proved a key source of inspiration when it came to creating Pee-wee.
Referring to his alter ego's "Mmmm! Chocolately!" catchphrase, he told how Guy would use a Yoda-like voice to say things like "Mmmm! Buttery!".
He added: “You can see where that led me."
Paul debuted the character while performing with the Groundlings comedy troupe in 1981 and when his Pee-wee sttage show took off in Los Angeles, he decided to completely conceal his personal life.
He reflected in the documentary: “I was out of the closet, and then I went back in the closet. I wasn’t pursuing the Paul Reubens career; I was pursuing the Pee-wee Herman career.”
The actor visited Guy in hospital when he was dying of AIDS.
He said: “To talk about seeing someone at death’s door … He probably died a couple hours after that.”
He also noted he had "many, many secret relationships" over the years and concealed more of his life from the public.
He said: “I hid behind an alter ego. I spent my entire adult life hiding 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.”
After his career soared thanks to a move into children's TV, he received a "devastating" blow when he was arrested and charged with indecent exposure at an adult movie theater in Florida in 1991, to which he pleaded no contest.
He reflected: “I kept who I was a secret for a very long time. That really backfired when I got arrested. People had never seen a photo of me other than Pee-wee Herman. And all of a sudden, I had a Charlie Manson mugshot.
“I lost control of my anonymity. It was devastating.”
And Paul admitted he was still feeling the impact of the scandal even decades later.
He said: “It’s shocking what horrible, awful stuff people think about me.
“It’s still a significant footnote … 30 years later I still feel the effects all the time.”
To rehabilitate his image, Paul returned as Pee-wee at the MTV Video Music Awards later that year and appeared as himself on 'Late Night With Conan O'Brien' and 'The Tonight Show with Jay Leno'. He was also occasionally seen dating women during that time, including actress Debi Mazar.
The 60-year-old star said in the documentary: “He was my boyfriend. I know people will say, ‘He was gay!’ So what?”
But in 2001, Paul was charged with possessing images thought to be child pornography but the avid memorabilia collector insisted they were "vintage erotica" and the charges were dropped in 2004, with the star pleading guilty to a lesser obscenity charge.
Though his career bounced back in the 2010s, when the obscenity topic was raised in 'Pee-wee as Himself', text on screen revealed Paul stopped co-operating with filmmakers after that and never sat for another interview.
He also kept his cancer diagnosis secret throughout filming but eventually changed his mind and sent a final audio message to the director before his death.
He movingly said in the clip: “My whole career, everything I did and wrote, was based in love."
He also said: “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 labelled something I wasn’t,. To be labelled a pariah; to have people be scared of you, or untrusting.”
