How Paul Reubens Landed Laurence Fishburne For Pee-Wee's Playhouse

The late, great Paul Reubens didn't just bring his chipper, friendly, well-dressed character Pee-wee Herman to television with "Pee-wee's Playhouse." He also brought total anarchy. In a children's television landscape dominated by poorly disguised toy commercials and wholesome live-action hosts, "Pee-wee's Playhouse" was a loud, chaotic, unapologetically strange (and sometimes controversial) TV series where anything can and, usually, did happen.

Hosted by Reubens, every episode featured Pee-wee Herman — decked out in a (let's be honest here) pretty stylish grey tailored suit and a little red bowtie — interacting with his anthropomorphic furniture, getting his wishes granted by strange deities, and getting visited by a cavalcade of friends. But these friends weren't the normal human beings who lived next door to Pee-wee in the hit film "Pee-wee's Big Adventure," who loved him or hated him, but never shared his kookiness. "Pee-wee's Playhouse" was populated by lovable goofballs just like Pee-wee himself, who dressed in bright, fun clothing and took on whatever persona made them happy.

And because Hollywood history is fun sometimes, one of those friendly weirdos was played by an actor who had already co-starred in "Apocalypse Now" and "The Color Purple," and who would go on to a lengthy career of playing magnetic tough guys in action franchises like "The Matrix" and "John Wick," and impressing in serious dramatic roles in classics like "Boyz n the Hood," "Searching for Bobby Fischer," and "What's Love Got To Do With It."

So how did Laurence Fishburne become the lovable wild west kids' show character Cowboy Curtis?

There's a saying in the entertainment industry: "It's all about who you know." Film, television, and theater are incredibly collaborative mediums, and so while artists are always looking for people who are talented, it also helps if the people behind a production know they can work with you in a team environment before you get hired. In other words, people like to work with people they know are good to work with.

So yes, it's true that Laurence Fishburne already had an "in" with Paul Reubens by the time "Pee-wee's Playhouse" was going into production, but they didn't meet while acting together on a previous project. They didn't meet at a fancy Hollywood party either.

No, they met through a lighting guy.

"Laurence [Fishburne]" I knew already," Reubens told The Los Angeles Times in 2014. "We did cast Laurence in New York, but — this is such an odd story — I had a high school kid who was the follow spot operator on the 'Pee-wee Herman Show' at the Groundlings, and his best friend was Laurence Fishburne, they were both at Hollywood High School."  

"Laurence had already done 'Apocalypse Now,' but I only knew him as the sidekick to my follow spot operator," Reubens reminisced, before remembering an old anxiety. "And I would always be, 'Are they up too late?'" 

(Maybe if Reubens knew everything that happened on the set of "Apocalypse Now," and the lie Fishburne told to get cast in it, he wouldn't have worried quite so much about little things like curfews.)

Paul Reubens explained to the LA Times how Laurence Fishburne's cowboy cameo came to be:

"When I was casting Cowboy Curtis in New York, I could not find a cowboy; the casting people kept sending me models. I saw every African-American model in New York, but I couldn't find somebody who could do it. And the only actor I knew in New York was Laurence Fishburne; so I called him and asked him, 'Would you come down and read this?' I remember really clearly him coming in in costume, which is always kind of a courageous choice for an actor because you can be so off-base. You walk into a casting office or on the studio lot in some get-up and go, 'Uh-oh, this isn't right.' But he was fantastic; he just nailed it."

It's nice that Reubens said Fishburne "just nailed" the audition, but that's not quite how Fishburne remembers it. "The thing about that was, when I auditioned for it, I actually went in and did a whole serious gunslinger kind of thing," Fishburne told Conan O'Brien in a 2018 interview. "I was like channeling Yul Brynner from the old 'Westworld' movie, right?"

"Like, he's a serious cowpoke and he's a gunslinger," Fishburne said. "He's gonna kill ya, and I'm gonna ... and I was with John Paragon [writer, director, voice of Jambi] and Paul Reubens, and they were like ... 'Uhhh, lighter?' And I was like, 'Oh, oh! You mean, like, comedy?' They were like, 'Yeah! Yeah, that's it That's it!' And I was like, 'Oh, okay!' because I completely didn't get it."

Thank goodness he figured it out eventually, because if he hadn't, "Pee-wee's Playhouse" just wouldn't have been the same.