The Closet in Pee-wee’s Playhouse

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The New York Times

News Commentary, Society & Culture, News, Arts

4.8 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 10 July 2025

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the new HBO documentary “Pee-wee as Himself,” Paul Reubens, the creator of the iconic character Pee-wee Herman, comes out as gay. Reubens, who spent most of his career in the closet, had already come out years before but then returned to the closet during his time as the popular Saturday morning children’s show host. On today’s episode of “Cannonball,” Wesley Morris talks with the writer Mark Harris about Reubens’s relationship to being closeted, and they discuss what it means for artists to publicly come out.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everybody, it's Wesley, and I'm just coming to you with some news. You know how everybody is
0:05.8	frequently telling you like, listen to wherever you get your podcast. And it's, you know where to go
0:10.0	to do that because you've got a relationship with some podcast thing. I am here to tell you about
0:14.6	another way to experience cannonball. And that is on YouTube. We have our own channel. And if you go
0:20.6	there, you will find lots of episodes of the show. That's where the show is going to also live in addition to wherever you get your podcasts. So if you go to YouTube.com slash at Cannonball Podcasts. That's at like email at. I didn't know you could do that with a URL.
0:39.8	You'll get there and that's where you'll experience the show.
0:42.9	And, you know, while you're there, you can subscribe.
0:46.3	Thanks for listening and here is this week's episode.
0:54.8	I'm Wesley Morris and this is Cannonball.
1:00.7	And a few weeks ago, I had a free moment during the NBA playoffs.
1:02.5	Shout out OKC, y'all did it.
1:04.7	And I flipped over to C-SPAN.
1:08.5	That's another conversation for another time, but I love C-SPAN.
1:15.6	But when I got there, there was Pete Buttigieg. He was doing a town hall in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. So, you know, you come to a place you haven't been to in a little while.
1:21.3	And watching him, the whole court just got me to think in the... Gainous! It's never been in Wilder territory.
1:28.3	It was before Chaston and I became parents to an incredible son and daughter,
1:33.2	Gus and Pinell.
1:33.8	And by wild, I just mean normal, basic, but also complex in its basicness.
1:44.5	Watching him on C-SPAN, though,
1:47.1	what I was really thinking about was
1:48.8	how many ways there are right now to be a kind of,
1:53.0	I don't know, regular gay.
	...

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