Paul Reubens did not tell his director, Matt Wolf, that he was dying from cancer. The actor and comedian, who famously starred as Pee-wee Herman in the 1980s, passed away in 2023 at age 70.

Paul Reubens, known for his iconic character Pee-wee Herman, died on July 30, 2023 Keith Langston is a contributing writer at PEOPLE. He has been working at PEOPLE since 2023. His work has ...

A new documentary airing on HBO tonight will serve as the definitive portrait of Paul Reubens and his comedic alter-ego Pee-wee Herman. “Pee-wee as Himself” was primarily filmed prior to ...

Even as Reubens wanted to impact kids with TV the way it impacted him, he lost part of himself by having his alter ego pass as a real person. Director Matt Wolf shrewdly recounts Reubens’ life ...

Paul Reubens — aka Pee-wee Herman — left a heartbreaking phone message for filmmaker Matt Wolf the day before he died. The two had been collaborating on “Pee-wee Herman as Himself,” a docu ...

(CREDIT: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images) Director Matt Wolf spent two years interviewing Paul Reubens for his new HBO documentary “Pee-Wee as Himself,” not realizing that the actor was ...

One of the pivotal turns in Paul Reubens’s life happened years before Pee-wee Herman, years before the “Playhouse,” years before the arrests. It was the mid-seventies, and Reubens was in his ...

Paul Reubens’s performance as Pee-wee Herman gave fans “license to be weird.” At an underground cabaret, he cheered on his community of renegades. Paul Reubens, as seen in the documentary ...

“This is such a dumb thing to say,” Paul Reubens, creator of beloved children’s character Pee-wee Herman, admits in his new documentary, Pee-wee as Himself. “But death is so final that to ...

You know him as "Pee-wee Herman," but in a new documentary, he wants you to know him simply as Paul Reubens. "Pee-wee as Himself," a two-part HBO series, shows a side of the beloved children's ...

Not because of its content, but its title. The name Pee-wee as Himself highlights a crucial insecurity and paradox of the performer: That Reubens, for all his Garbo-esque desire for privacy ...

Considering that Paul Reubens helped deconstruct performance art and children’s TV — not your usual combo — is it any surprise that “Pee-wee as Himself” deconstructs the documentary?