AVC: You tend to be physically expressive in your roles, and Pee-wee in particular has a very distinctive way of moving. Does that come out of your improv background, or have you had specific movement training?
PR: You know, I don't know the answer to that, I certainly went to various acting schools, and I had movement classes, and I grew up in Sarasota, Florida, which is the winter headquarters of the Ringling Brothers circus, so there are a lot of circus things going on there, and I went to a camp that had a circus program. But I don't know. Pee-wee just kind of popped out one day, pretty much fully fleshed-out and fully formed.
AVC: Various biographies have claimed he was specifically based on someone you knew, but they often disagree on who it was. Do you identify him with any particular person from your past?
PR: Yeah, there are certainly little bits and pieces of other people in him, but mostly, he's just a made-up creation. I spent a lot of years prior to that just observing behavior and watching people. So it blends lots of stuff, including people I don't actually know.
AVC: From your early comedy days to the end of the CBS TV series, you played Pee-wee for about 20 years. How did he develop, or how did you refine the character over that time?
PR: More than really developing him or refining him, he sort of expanded. At a certain point, I realized "This is what you're doing." I sort of let Pee-wee do things that I hadn't originally thought of. I can't really explain that, but the boundaries of what Pee-wee could be and what he could do just sort of expanded.
AVC: The Pee-wee Herman Show was a little more aimed at adults. When did you decide to make him primarily a kids' character?
PR: It was sort of two-fold. We did performances of the stage show at the Roxy Theater on the Sunset Strip in L.A., and it was designed to be performed at midnight, so obviously it was for adults. But it was designed to mesh together all the shows that the audience had grown up on, to push nostalgic buttons for old-fashioned kids' shows. It wasn't particularly… I would argue that it was very similar to Pee-wee's Playhouse. It's certainly a little racier, but racy like people going "No, I reeeally like you," instead of saying "I'm hot for you." So it's racy, but just in an corny, old-fashioned kind of way. There's probably more innuendo in the actual kids' show.
AVC: Is it true that the idea for Pee-wee's Playhouse came from Andy Kaufman?
PR: No, it's not. I've heard that a lot, but I don't know where that came from, actually. Andy had Andy's Funhouse around the same time. I saw it performed—I was this huge Andy Kaufman fan. But no, we were just both doing kids' shows. In fact, around the same time, David Arquette's father, Lewis Arquette, was doing this kids' show for late-night television called Uncle Late Night. So there were a lot of things that were kind of the same thing. When I look back at them now, I think what Andy did wasn't really similar to what I did.
AVC: The Internet Movie Database says you had "complete creative control over Pee-wee's Playhouse, with three minor exceptions," but it doesn't give any details. Do you remember what the exceptions were?
PR: In the first episode, the network said "You can't stick that pencil in that potato, because pencils are sharp, and you might encourage kids to stab things." So we didn't do that. Let's see. There was an episode they got a letter about, where there was a fire in the playhouse, and a firefighter showed up and he and Miss Yvonne were flirting, and he said "You have to have a smoke detector," and she said "I have one in my bedroom, above the bed." They asked us to change that for subsequent airings of the show, so we went in and looped dialogue over it, so instead, she said "I have one in my kitchen." I put it back to the original version for the DVD release. There was a shot of a bathroom door that we held for a really long time, and you could hear Pee-wee peeing. They asked us to tone the sound of the peeing down, and add a score so it was a little less graphic. All the changes they asked us to make seemed really reasonable to me, and we accommodated them. I think in 45 episodes, there were only maybe three other changes they ever asked for.
AVC: Was it difficult to secure that kind of creative freedom?
PR: No. It was a really remarkable situation—they were completely open to what we were trying to do. They liked what we were doing, and understood it, and they'd go along with almost anything. It'd be very difficult to get that kind of situation today.
AVC: Were you ever tempted to push the envelope, to see how far you could go or what you could get away with?
PR: Honestly, I think we did that every day, though never in a conscious or deliberate kind of way.
AVC: Do you think Pee-wee appealed to you for the same reason he appealed to children?
PR: I really think it's the same for me as it is for them. I've always felt like a kid, and I still feel like a kid, and I've never had any problem tapping into my childhood, and my kid side. And I think that's a very universal thing, I don't think it's unique to me at all. People I've talked to in their 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s have all told me "You know, I still feel 20." So I don't expect that I'm going to be any different.
AVC: You work in an industry that loves scandals and can be merciless about publicly exploiting and judging any sign of impropriety. And it's certainly been merciless with you. Did you ever consider getting into another line of work?
PR: You know, I'm not sure there's anything else out there I'd really be suited for. Some job where I got to boss people around, I guess. It just never really entered my head to leave. I think my entire career path was determined for me when I was 6 years old, watching reruns of I Love Lucy on TV and thinking about making people laugh.
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