‘Pee Wee Herman’ Star Paul Reubens Revealed As Gay in New Documentary

The man behind Pee-wee Herman had a final chance to talk about his personal life in a posthumous documentary premiering at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. According to Us Weekly, Paul Reubens took his opportunity in the new documentary Pee-wee as Himself to open up about his sexuality and his secret boyfriend.

“I was secretive about my sexuality even to my friends [out of] self-hatred or self-preservation,” Reubens reveals in the documentary from director Matt Wolf. The comedian and actor sat for some 40 hours of interviews that candidly opened up about his personal life and the balance with fame across his career.

Reubens passed away in July 2023 at 70 years old after an unpublicized bout with cancer. He spoke out about the documentary before his passing, with Us Weekly showing he made the intentions behind it very clear.

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“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 said in an audio recording one day before his death. “To be labeled a pariah; to have people be scared of you, or untrusting.”

Reubens kept his sexuality private and away from his career. The closest brush with publicity his personal life had was his surprising arrest in 1991 for indecent exposure after an incident at an adult movie theater.

“I kept who I was a secret for a very long time. That really backfired when I got arrested,” Reubens explains. “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.”

He calls the moment and the reaction it sparked a “significant footnote” in his life, singling out what folks had said about him after the arrest.

“It’s shocking what horrible, awful stuff people think about me…I was out of the closet, and then I went back in the closet,” he says. “I wasn’t pursuing the Paul Reubens career, I was pursuing the Pee-wee Herman career.”

Pee-wee as Himself will stream on Max later in 2025.