Paul Reubens, comic who played Pee-wee Herman, comes out as gayActor Paul Reubens opened up about his sexuality for a documentary about his life, which was filmed before he died of cancer in 2023. In a documentary that premiered this week at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, Paul Reubens comes out posthumously after keeping his sexual orientation private for his entire career.
The new documentary, Pee-wee as Himself, sees the comic open up about being in a romantic relationship with a man named Guy, according to the New York Post. In fact, it was Guy’s voice and behavior that influenced the character of Pee-wee Herman.
Reubens (shown in photo) was known for playing the quirky, innocent character on the Saturday morning show Pee-wee’s Playhouse, which ran from 1986 to 1990, and in several movies, including Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and Big Top Pee-wee. He also took the character to Broadway, with The Pee-wee Herman Show, which ran between 2010 and 2011. Otherwise, the performer appeared in guest roles on many TV shows and lent his voice to numerous animated characters.
“I was out of the closet, and then I went back in the closet,” Reubens says in the documentary. “I wasn’t pursuing the Paul Reubens career; I was pursuing the Pee-wee Herman career.” The movie — a production of HBO Documentary Films — covers the actor’s decades-long career. Its director, Matt Wolf, spent hours with Reubens and spoke with him about his work and also his sex scandals.
Reubens' reputation was tarnished somewhat when he was arrested on an indecent exposure charge for masturbating in an adult theater in Florida in 1991. He entered a plea of no contest and had to pay a small fine and do community service. Then in 2001, he was arrested in Los Angeles on charges of possessing child pornography. He said, however, that the images in his collection were not of children but of adults in “physique” poses such as those used in mid-century magazines that were popular with gay men. He agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor obscenity charge, pay a $100 fine, and register with the police for three years.
“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 says in the documentary, the Post reports. “To be labeled a pariah; to have people be scared of you, or untrusting.”
In speaking about his relationship with Guy, who was from Echo Park in Los Angeles, Reubens said Guy would say things like “Mmmm! Buttery” in “a Yoda-like brogue” the outlet reports. It’s a vocal style the character Pee-wee Herman used.
While he had secret relationships, Reubens says his career became his focus, but he also internalized a lot of homophobia. “I was secretive about my sexuality even to my friends [out of] self-hatred or self-preservation,” he says. “I was conflicted about sexuality. But fame was way more complicated.”
The subject of the obscenity charge led Reubens to stop cooperating with Wolf and the film team when it was brought up, according to the outlet. Eventually, he sent a final audio recording to Wolf to help complete the film.
Reubens was born in Peekskill, N.Y., and grew up in Sarasota, Fla. He began his career in comedy with the Groundlings troupe in Los Angeles, then created a stage show in L.A. as the Pee-wee Herman character. Titled The Pee-wee Herman Show, it ran for five months and was taped for an HBO special that aired in 1981, bringing Reubens national fame. He became a popular guest on Late Night With David Letterman and appeared at comedy clubs around the country. In 1985, Pee-wee's Big Adventure was released and added to his fan following.
Outside of the Herman character, Reubens played guest roles on many TV series, including Murphy Brown, The Blacklist, and What We Do in the Shadows. When he revived his stage show in Los Angeles before a Broadway run, Reubens spoke to The Advocate in-character as Pee-wee. The interviewer noted that he once married a bowl of fruit salad on Pee-wee's Playhouse, and then asked if Herman supported marriage equality — which, in 2010, was not yet the law of the land. Herman said that he did.(2/6)
Yes, lots of hot gay videos. We are a not-for-profit organization of a few gay seniors with disabilities who created an online gay network that includes all kinds of photos such as, naked men on the beach, nude men in nature hiking, sex in public, gay sex photos, men jerking off, men fucking and sucking. What’s especially fabulous is that the photo library categorizes pictures by topics, such as men naked in public, guys naked on the beach, nude men on the street, even men jerking off in public.
