Paul Reubens Addresses Arrest, ‘Pedophile’ Rumors in Personal Recordings Revealed in Documentary

Now, almost two years after his dying, Paul Reubens, the person who made Pee-Wee Herman a family identify, is opening up about all of it in his personal phrases — in recordings made shortly earlier than his dying — within the HBO docuseries Pee-Wee as Himselflaunched Friday.

Within the movie, Reubens talks about that ’91 arrest for indecent publicity at an grownup theater, saying it was a defining second in his profession to that time, and one which was largely misunderstood on the time. Much more than that, maybe, it uncovered the person behind the parable.

Within the documentary, Reubens confirmed that he was homosexual, admitting he was nervous to take action, and loved “many, many secret relationships.” However he at all times put his profession first. And within the early days, that profession was rapidly constructed across the child-like Pee-Wee Herman.

“I used to be out of the closet, after which I went again within the closet,” he defined of his early skilled years. “I wasn’t pursuing the Paul Reubens profession; I used to be pursuing the Pee-wee Herman profession.” That profession took off like a rocket.

He detailed a relationship early on that got here to imply quite a bit to him, however it additionally started to impression his ambitions. “Once we cut up up, I simply made a acutely aware choice and went, ‘I’m not doing this once more,'” he shares.

“I not solely wasn’t going to be overtly homosexual, however I wasn’t going to be in a relationship,” he provides. “My profession would’ve completely suffered if I used to be overtly homosexual, and so I went to nice lengths for a lot of, a few years to maintain it a secret.”

First born as a personality in iconic Groundlings improv theater, Reubens introduced Pee-Wee Herman to the stage for his personal present in 1981 and have become an virtually prompt phenomenon. By 1985, he’d starred in his first movie, with a second on the best way.

One 12 months later, he launched his personal Saturday morning sequence, Pee-Wee’s Playhousewhich might run till 1990. For a time, he was one of the well-known and standard entertainers on the earth — till the arrest and the mugshots, exhibiting a shaggy-haired Reubens.

“It actually backfired once I bought arrested,” Reubens says within the new documentary. “Individuals had by no means seen a photograph of me aside from Pee-wee Herman, after which rapidly I had a Charles Manson mug shot.”

“It’s stunning what hideous, horrible, imply stuff folks say and take into consideration me,” he continues. Within the speedy aftermath of the arrest, Reubens was torn aside within the tabloid media, derailing his profession for almost a decade, although he did discover some memorable smaller roles in initiatives like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Murphy Brownand The Nightmare Earlier than Christmasalthough not as Pee-Wee.

And whereas he had produced sufficient episodes of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse throughout 5 seasons for syndication, CBS opted to cancel these after his arrest. Whereas he was slowly in a position to revive his profession, and even the Pee-Wee Herman persona, there isn’t any doubt the arrest and subsequent speculations about his private life had an enormous impression on him.

A police raid on his house in 2002 that uncovered his assortment of classic homoerotic artwork additionally caught after a few of it was categorized as baby pornography. Reubens, who collected all kinds of issues all through his grownup life, discovered himself charged with one misdemeanor depend of possession of kid pornography.

Via a plea deal, he bought the fabric reclassified as having nothing to do with baby pornography, and pleaded responsible to possession of obscene materials. He was ordered to attend necessary counseling and needed to register as a intercourse offender for 3 years.

Whereas most imagine that public notion of what occurred was overblown and unjust, it nonetheless hung as a shadow over the rest of Reuben’s profession.

This can be a massive a part of why Reubens mentioned he needed to peel again the curtain of his life with this documentary. In a recording made the day earlier than his dying, he defined he needed to make the movie “to let folks see who I actually am and the way painful and troublesome it was to be labeled one thing that I wasn’t,” mentioned Reubens.

“I needed folks to grasp that sometimes the place there may be smoke, there isn’t at all times hearth,” he added. “I needed by some means for folks to grasp that my complete profession, every little thing I did and wrote, was primarily based in love and my need to entertain and convey glee and creativity to younger folks and to everybody.”

Reubens died July 30, 2023, at 70 years previous whereas battling each myelogenous leukemia and metastic lung most cancers.