In the upcoming HBO docuseries 'Pee-wee as Himself', which premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, Paul Reubens recalls the "painful" memory of being falsely labeled a "pedophile" following his two arrests.

"Pee-wee Herman" star Paul Reubens, who died in 2023, has posthumously revealed he was gay in a new documentary unveiled at Sundance Film Festival.

It was a push-and-pull relationship between the director and his subject right up to the day before his death on July 30, 2023. "I had no idea that Paul had been battling cancer for six years," Wolf told senior writer Drew Taylor at TheWrap's Sundance Studio presented by World of Hyatt.

Paul Reubens, best known for his role as “Pee-wee Herman,” died in 2023 following a battle with cancer. But it seems that Reubens still has a few things to get off his chest, albeit from beyond the grave, in an upcoming documentary entitled, “Pee-wee as Himself.” PEOPLE Magazine reported the film premiered on Thursday at the Sundance Film Festival.

I was secretive about my sexuality even to my friends… [out of] self-hatred or self-preservation,” the late actor said in an interview with HBO.

I want to set the record straight on a couple of things, and that’s it.” So says Paul Reubens — better remembered by many viewers as offbeat children’s entertainer Pee-Wee Herman — at the outset of “Pee-Wee as Himself,

A two-part documentary about the life of Paul Reubens, aka Pee-wee Herman, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Thursday. Reubens sat for over 40 hours of interviews with director Matt Wolf to create Pee-wee as Himself.

Paul Reubens, the man who created and inhabited the beloved, iconic character Pee-wee Herman, has posthumously come out as gay in a new two-part documentary about his life. Pee-wee as Himself, directed by Matt Wolf and distributed by HBO,

Nearly a year and a half after Pee-wee Herman star Paul Reubens passed away from acute hypoxic respiratory failure at the age of 70, the late actor came out as gay during one of his final interviews.