Was paul rubens gay
In the final months before his death in July 2023, Paul Reubens got a chance to get a “message in at the last minute,” as he put it. Sitting down for over 40 hours of interviews for the HBO documentary Pee-wee as Himself, the actor, comedian, and Pee-wee Herman creator came out as gay, discussed his “devastating” scandals, and offered fresh insight into a life that he had always kept secret.
“I had many, many secret relationships,” Reubens says in the documentary, which premiered this week at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. “I was secretive about my sexuality even to my friends [out of] self-hatred or self-preservation,” he says at another point. “I was conflicted about sexuality. But fame was way more complicated.”
Pee-wee as Himself was first announced in 2021, with Matt Wolf directing and Josh Safdie and Benny Safdie serving as executive producers. Reubens himself consented to the project and spent “several hundred hours” discussing it with Wolf (per Variety), but kept his struggle with cancer secret to the filmmakers until days before his death.
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Paul Reubens Comes Out as Homosexual Posthumously in Pee-wee Doc
Paul Reubens, the actor behind the iconic Pee-wee Herman character, has come out as gay — a year and a half after he died.
The New York Post reports that Reubens, who died of cancer at 70 in July 2023, sat with director Matt Wolf for 40 hours across a year to document the story of his life and career for the two-part HBO doc series "Pee-wee as Himself," which premiered Thursday at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
Though Reubens never publicly confirmed he was gay, in the interviews, he talks about wanting "people to see who I really am."
He says before he became a household name as Pee-wee Herman, the manic boy-man who hosted a popular Saturday-morning kids' exhibition for years, he was in a relationship with a human named Guy from the Echo Park neighborhood of L.A. It was Guy's strange way of speaking that first inspired Reubens to create Pee-wee.
According to Reubens, Guy would say stuff appreciate, "Mmmm! Buttery!" in a Yoda accent. "You can see where that led me," he cracks.
Guy later died of AIDS "a couple hours" after Reubens last visited him.
Back when he was a Groundlings comic
Reubens’ success as Pee-wee was undeniable. Throughout the 1980s, the character became a fixture on late-night television, landing the star his Emmy-winning children’s show,Pee-wee’s Playhouse, and two knock films. (A third, far less noted Pee-wee film came out in 2016, years after Reubens’ career collapsed tracking his 1991 arrest for indecent exposure.)
Though he refused to be public about his sexuality during his career, the actor told Wolf he had “many, many secret relationships” amid the height of his fame.
Despite refusing to approach out as lgbtq+ during his lifetime, Reubens decided to make his sexuality public in the posthumous documentary, which is crafted from 40 hours of interviews done prior to his death at the age of 70 in 2023 due to acute hypoxic respiratory failure.
The star, who was also fighting two forms of cancer and kept his diagnosis confidential during the last years of his life, told Wolf how working on Pee-wee as Himself gave him a chance to shape his own legacy after years of scandal, speculation, and gossip.
“More than anything, the reason I wanted to make a documentary was for people to watch who I really am, and how painful and dreadful it was to
‘Pee-wee Herman’ star Paul Reubens comes out as same-sex attracted in posthumous documentary: ‘I was secretive about my sexuality’
After time actor Paul Reubens, foremost known for portraying Pee-wee Herman, publicly came out as gay in a posthumous HBO documentary that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. The two-part special includes his concluding interviews before his death from cancer in July 2023 at age 70.
In extensive conversations with director Matt Wolf, Reubens admitted to being secretive about his sexuality, even with close friends. He revealed that before achieving fame, he had a boyfriend named Guy but chose to hide his sexual orientation as his Pee-wee Herman persona became widely recognized.
Reubens joint that he once lived openly but later retreated into secrecy, prioritizing his career over personal realness. He also reflected on visiting Guy in the hospital shortly before his death from AIDS, acknowledging the deep but secret influence Guy had on his life and character.
Throughout his career, Reubens had multiple secret relationships and concealed aspects of his identity, including his love for marijuana. Actress Debi Mazar, often seen with him, asserted that