‘Pee-wee’s Playhouse’ Star Opens Up About Her Touching Last Talk With Paul Reubens
The Most Beautiful Woman in Puppetland loved Pee-wee Herman until the end, and he kept her laughing the whole time.
Yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of the passing of Paul Reubens, the iconic actor and comedian whose performance as the childish eccentric Pee-wee Herman on stage, in film and on television brought so much joy to generations of kids and adults — and jump-started a couple careers in entertainment in the process. Reubens’ children’s television series Pee-wee’s Playhouse, which ran from 1986 to 1990 on CBS, featured a long-time collaborator of Reubens in a role that opened numerous doors in entertainment and paved the way for future performances on other beloved shows such as It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
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Lynne Marie Stewart, who played Miss Yvonne in Reubens’ stage shows, in the CBS series and in the Pee-wee films, reflected on her final conversation with the star when he was hospitalized with both leukemia and lung cancer in a recent conversation with People Magazine, revealing that a harrowing double-diagnosis did nothing to dampen his sense of humor.
“I got to be in the hospital with him,” Stewart said of her last talk with her long-time co-star. “He said, ‘I have loved deeply, and I’ve been loved in return.’ I said, ‘Paul, you’re loved all over the world.’ And I was so glad to be able to tell him that.”
Stewart and Reubens began performing together in the legendary improv and sketch comedy theater troupe The Groundlings in Los Angeles along with their future Pee-wee's Playhouse castmate Phil Hartman. When Reubens’ Pee-wee character began to take on a little life of his own, Hartman and Stewart stayed close to their castmate and appeared in the numerous stage and screen iterations of the Pee-wee show, including the CBS series.
“He was funny to the end,” Stewart recalled before recalling her old friend and co-stars last great roast. “I said to him, ‘You fulfilled a little girl’s dream.’ He was like, ‘Oh, do I have to hear this story again?’” Stewart said of Reubens‘ immortal wit. “He never lost it. He never lost his sense of humor.”
Stewart further reflected on the impact of Reubens’ historic career in humor, saying of his early days performing as Pee-wee, saying, “I saw the genius in it. When we did it at the Roxy, there was a little balcony in the Roxy, and I would go watch (Paul), and the audience, which was adults, would go and sing, and he would throw Tootsie rolls at them. Sometimes, they would hit people on the eye, but they didn’t care. ... They just went crazy. And I said, ‘Oh my God, this is big. This is bigger than the Roxy.’ And it turned out to be (that) Pee-wee Herman was a worldwide phenomenon.”
The success of the Pee-wee universe helped to propel Stewart into screen roles, and, today she plays Bonnie Kelly, mother to Charlie, on the hit sitcom It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which is kind of like the adult version of Pee-Wee's Playhouse if everyone on Pee-Wee's Playhouse was an abortion survivor with an addiction to huffing glue.
