Pee-wee Herman Was Exuberant. Paul Reubens Was Almost Serene.

Pee-wee Herman was noisy. He was boisterous. He had a voice that will shoot up a number of decibels with out warning, whether or not he was inviting his TV viewers to play a sport of join the dots or interrogating his associates concerning the whereabouts of his lacking bicycle. The mysterious nature of his character — was he speculated to be a person, a toddler or a person pretending to be a toddler? — appeared to excuse his exuberant power and extreme volumes, and he, in flip, gave that very same permission to his viewers. Like he advised us on “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” his youngsters’ present that wasn’t actually only for youngsters, “You all know what to do when anyone says the secret word, right?” That’s proper: “Scream real loud!”

Paul Reubens, who created and performed Pee-wee Herman for greater than 40 years, and who died on Sunday on the age of 70, was quiet. It wasn’t merely that he had a mild method or a decidedly un-Pee-wee-like reluctance to name consideration to himself — he additionally had a pure talking voice that was mushy sufficient to be drowned out by a passing breeze. As Reubens advised me once I first interviewed him in 2004, he was conscious of this duality, between what his spirited alter ego promised and what he delivered in particular person, out of character. Fans may need anticipated Pee-wee ranges of depth, however face-to-face, he stated, “Now I’m kind of like this. Putting people to sleep.”

There was not a lot thriller about Reubens, which gave the impression to be how he wished it. Without the grey swimsuit and pink bow tie, he was only a man who appreciated kitschy toys, classic kids’s tv reveals and making individuals chortle. His liveliness and creativity have been expressed by means of Pee-wee, whom he portrayed in his personal media initiatives and in late-night interviews. Even within the minor film roles and TV gigs he did earlier than Pee-wee went big-time, he was nonetheless just about enjoying the Herman character.

These days we intuitively perceive the excellence between the private and non-private lives of celebrities, between what they want us to see and what we’d later find out about them. Reubens didn’t simply draw a vivid line between Pee-wee and Paul; he utterly compartmentalized them and, for a time, had us fortunately believing they have been distinct people. His beloved persona was a lot his personal impartial entity that, within the closing credit of works like “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure,” Pee-wee Herman is solely billed as “HIMSELF.”

Perhaps that’s what made Reubens’s 1991 arrest for indecent publicity so jarring: Beyond its reminder that he and Herman weren’t the identical particular person, there was the disconcerting chance that the healthful Pee-wee could be punished for his creator’s offense. In the aftermath, Reubens questioned if the character would simply be obliterated, sending him again “to my total anonymous civilian life,” as he advised me in an interview in 2010.

At that point, Reubens was getting ready to carry “The Pee-wee Herman Show” to Broadway, and he appeared much less involved with how his previous scandals had affected him than how they could have tarnished the title character.

“I wrecked it to some degree, you know?” he stated. “It got made into something different. The shine got taken off it.”

None of this appeared to matter to his followers, who shouted out their proclamations of affection and loyalty — to Pee-wee Herman — whereas I watched him stroll the streets of Manhattan in his conventional costume. A number of days later, having reverted to Paul Reubens, he appeared genuinely stunned by all the love. In a voice as mushy as may be, he stated the expertise was “so weird and so great at the same time.”

“It was odd, and it was fantastic,” he stated. “Both, rolled into one.”