AVC: You had a lot of success as Pee-wee, obviously, but you have a career outside him these days. If you go back to playing him, are you risking typecasting yourself and killing your outside career?
PR: I sure hope not. Honestly, Hollywood is such a competitive place… A lot of people ask, "Do you feel you were typecast during the Pee-wee years?" And I have no idea the answer to that, honestly. I feel that I just gotta do what I feel is right. It certainly is a constant conversation in casting, where I say, "You know, you could think of me in this role or that role, I'm not always Pee-wee Herman." And sometimes I've been successful in convincing them, and other times, people just go, "No, I really can't see him in that role." And that's just the way it is. That's the way it is for almost anyone in Hollywood—you do one thing, and that's suddenly who you are. So I think it's really up to me to write something for myself and make it happen.
AVC: People do get excited when you break your mold, for instance with your part in Blow or the movie version of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Do you have the same sort of glee when you step far away from your signature role?
PR: Yeah, it's definitely refreshing, and it's definitely a lot of fun for me to be in someone else's movie, be an actor for hire. You don't have all the stress of "I'm carrying this project," those kinds of things. So yeah, it's really fun. I just did one day on the Reno 911 movie, and it was fantastic. I haven't done anything like that in a long time. You just kind of breeze in and breeze out, with no worries about anything. Part of me gets a funny, devilish kind of glee out of seeing other people—walking on the set and watching the television director or producer jumping around and stressing out. It's fun to watch that person and think, "I don't have that kind of responsibility for this project."
AVC: One of your more recent credits is for a 2007 film called The Tripper, David Arquette's directorial debut. What's your role in that like?
PR: It's a movie about a bunch of young people who go to an outdoor music festival. And I play the festival promoter, who's very materialistic and a very funny guy.
AVC: What's David Arquette like as a director?
PR: He's fantastic. He's a good friend of mine—he got a lot of his friends to be in the movie—and he has an incredible eye. He's very talented.
AVC: What's your ideal director like?
PR: Someone with an eye for detail. Someone who's watching everything, watching what's in the frame, composition, beauty, performance. There are a lot of things that make a director great.
AVC: You've done a lot of cartoon voiceover work lately. How did you get into that field?
PR: I've done a lot of that kind of stuff over the years. When I was just starting out as Pee-wee Herman, I got a call from someone to go in and work on the second set of Flintstones cartoons they made in the early '80s, where a monster family moved next door to the Flintstones, and it was like the Addams Family, only monsters. So that was a firm beginning of that for me. It's just that every once in a while, I'll get a call. Sometimes I'll go in for an audition for something, and other times it's just "Do you want to do this?" I just did a pilot for the Cartoon Network, called Reanimated. It's almost like a Who Framed Roger Rabbit-type thing, with live action and cartoon characters mixed together. Did a voice in that, worked with some amazing people. It's just one of those things that happens every once in a while, and it's a lot of fun, because you're working with great people and it's very casual and relaxed. You don't put the makeup on, and you don't worry about what you look like.
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