NEED TO KNOW
- Pee-wee as Himself premieres on HBO on May 23.
- Paul Reubens delivered a series of revelations for the new documentary, candidly discussing everything from his sexuality to the arrests he described as “giant footnotes” in his life.
- “I wanted somehow for people to understand that my whole career, everything I did and wrote, was based in love,” Reubens said the day before his death on July 30, 2023.
In the new two-part HBO docuseries Pee-wee as Himself, Paul Reubens shares his final words with the world — delivering a series of bombshell revelations along the way.
Best known for his iconic alter ego, Pee-wee Herman, Reubens sat for more than 40 hours of one-on-one interviews, candidly discussing everything from his sexuality to the arrests he described as “giant footnotes” in his life — and the unexpected way he chose to say goodbye.
Here are some of the most shocking and poignant moments to expect from the documentary.
Reubens comes out as gay
Although Reubens never publicly came out during his lifetime, director Matt Wolf says it was something the comedian always intended to do. “It was a decision he had made but one he was very ambivalent and anxious about,” Wolf tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “He was very concerned about having his sexuality be a defining factor of who he was.”
For the documentary, Reubens reflected on a “long-term, very serious” relationship with a man named Guy shortly after college. They lived together, shared a cat and, according to Reubens, the relationship inspired much of his comedy. “I looked across the room and saw someone and fell in love instantly,” he recalled. “I just went, ‘That’s him. That’s the guy.’ ”
Ultimately, Reubens prioritized his career and moved forward hiding his sexuality and forgoing all future relationships. “I was as out as you can be, and then I went back in the closet,” he said. “My career absolutely would have suffered if I was openly gay. So I went to great lengths for many, many years to keep it a secret.”
Reubens found much of his early inspiration in drag
During his time at the California Institute of the Arts, Reubens began exploring alternative forms of creativity. “It was just this little safe community of people,” he recalled. “Everyone was seeming to figure out ‘Who am I as an artist?’ ”
For Reubens, performance art was what resonated. “Sitting in the dorm at 2 a.m. in drag, just hanging out — you might think that I was a drag queen. And you could be right,” he said. “Doing drag and ‘passing’ — I can draw a line from that to having an alter ego and being successful in having that character ‘pass’ as a real person.”
Reubens says his arrest for indecent exposure in an adult theater was a ‘major footnote’ in his life
“If I was conflicted about sexuality… fame was so much more complicated,” Reubens reflected in the documentary. He added that his 1991 arrest for indecent exposure in an adult theater in Sarasota, Fla., became a “major footnote” in his life. “It really backfired when I got arrested, and people had never seen a photo of me other than [as] Pee-wee Herman, and then all of a sudden I had a Charlie Manson mug shot,” he said. “It’s shocking what hideous, horrible, mean stuff people say and think about me.”
Years later, police raided his home and seized his collection of vintage homoerotic art, including materials they categorized as child pornography.
“When he would discuss his [2002] arrest with me, he said the overwhelming feeling was shock,” Wolf recalls. “From my point of view, it was incredibly unjust. So it was easy for me to lay it all out clearly so that people could collectively recognize he had been mistreated.”
Reubens didn’t let the filmmakers know he was dying of cancer
Despite the depth of their conversations, Wolf says he had “no reason to believe that Reubens was contemplating his mortality.” In reality, Reubens had been quietly battling lung cancer for six years, confiding only in a small circle of close friends.
“It was incredibly shocking,” Wolf says of Reubens’s death, which occurred just one week before they were scheduled to record a final interview. “I found out that Paul died on Instagram along with everybody else.”
Shortly after his passing, Reubens’s assistant shared with Wolf a private recording he had made the day before he died — his final message to the world. “More than anything, the reason I wanted to make a documentary was to let people see who I really am and how painful and difficult it was to be labeled something that I wasn’t . . . a pedophile,” he said. “I wanted somehow for people to understand that my whole career, everything I did and wrote, was based in love.”
During one of their interviews, Reubens told Wolf, “Death is just so final. To be able to get your message in at the last minute, or at some point, is incredible.”
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