Paul Reubens, the actor behind the iconic character of Pee-wee Herman, posthumously came out as gay in a documentary that premiered last week at the Sundance Film Festival.

In Pee-wee as Himself, Reubens spoke about retreating back into the closet to protect his career.

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“I was secretive about my sexuality even to my friends [out of] self-hatred or self-preservation,” he reportedly says in the film. “I was conflicted about sexuality. But fame was way more complicated.”

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Despite initially being open about a relationship he had with a man named Guy, Reubens explained that as his career grew, he decided to hide that part of himself.

“I was out of the closet, and then I went back in the closet,” he said. “I wasn’t pursuing the Paul Reubens career. I was pursuing the Pee-wee Herman career.”

Reubens said Guy – who ultimately died of AIDS – also acted as inspiration for the Pee-wee Herman character.

He also said throughout his career, he had “many, many secret relationships.”

Reubens died in 2023 at the age of 70 after a six-year battle with cancer. Into’s Henry Giardina described him as “an unapologetically odd, decidedly queer-coded performer who brought a little weirdness into our humdrum lives for decades.”

“Though Reubens never officially came out or spoke about his sexuality,” Giardinia continued, “his deliberate oddness, offbeat sense of humor, and ability to playfully poke fun at societal mores made him a beloved queer icon to millions.”

In the documentary, Reubens also addressed why he wanted to make a film discussing both the good and bad times of his career, including his 1991 arrest for indecent exposure, to which he pleaded no contest.

“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. To be labeled a pariah; to have people be scared of you, or untrusting… My whole career, everything I did and wrote, was based in love.”  

He added, “The moment I heard someone label me as — I’m just going to say it — a pedophile, I knew it was going to change everything moving forward and backwards.”

But according to the New York Post, the actor stopped cooperating with director Matt Wolf when asked about a 2001 scandal that led to him being charged with possession of child pornography. Reubens was an avid collector and argued the photographs were “vintage erotica.” The charges were dropped in 2004, with Reubens pleading guilty to a smaller charge for obscenity.

The documentary reportedly posits that many of Reubens’ legal troubles came from homophobia, with his publicist Kelly Bush Novak calling the child pornography arrest “a homophobic witch hunt.”

Text in the documentary explains that Reubens refused to sit for any more interviews once the scandals were broached. But the day before he died, he recorded audio for the film: “I wanted to talk about and have some understanding of what it’s like to be labeled a pariah, to have people scared of you, or unsure of you, or untrusting, or to look at what your intentions are through some kind of filter that’s not true, I wanted people to understand that occasionally, where there is smoke, there isn’t always fire.”

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