When the new HBO documentary Pee-wee as Himself premiered, it peeled back the impish grin of Paul Reubens's iconic character and offered audiences a rare glimpse at the tender, tormented, and fiercely private man behind the bow tie. But for Abby Rubenfeld, Reubens's younger sister, the revelations, though emotional, were hardly news.

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“Obviously, I always knew he was gay,” Rubenfeld said. “But Paul thought people didn’t know. He thought it would ruin his career.”

For Rubenfeld, a pioneering LGBTQ+ rights attorney, Reubens's decision to remain closeted was painful but understandable. “It was upsetting to me, to a degree, but he thought it best for his career. And I get all the issues about a kids’ show and blah blah blah, but nobody should suffer like that about their sexuality. It makes me crazy that he felt he had to stay in the closet.”

In the documentary, viewers see archival footage of Reubens in full drag during his CalArts years, a side of him even his sister never fully knew. “I didn’t realize how performative and artsy he was in college,” Rubenfeld remarked. “He was pretty good at it. When he would come home on vacations, he’d go to bars and stuff, but I had no idea he was doing performance art in drag.”

The siblings were close in age, just 13 months apart, and grew up mainly in Sarasota, Florida. In their adult lives, their paths diverged: Reubens went into the closet, becoming a household name as Pee-wee Herman; Rubenfeld was totally out of the closet as a lesbian, becoming a prominent LGBTQ+ litigator.

She served as lead counsel in Tanco v. Haslam, the Tennessee case folded into Obergefell v. Hodges, in which a Supreme Court decision established marriage equality in the U.S. She’s also worked with Lambda Legal and fought discrimination since the early days of the AIDS crisis.

But the two shared a complicated relationship around identity. She said there was an early sign that Paul might be queer.

Related: Paul Reubens, comic who played Pee-wee Herman, comes out as gay posthumously in new documentary

"In high school, I had a '65 Rambler that he used to borrow," Rubenfeld recalled. "One time, he got arrested while driving my car with a friend who, back then, was referred to as a cross-dresser, though we now understand that person was probably trans.”

In Florida in the late '60s, there was what Rubenfeld calls an unconstitutional law that let police arrest anyone they suspected of committing a felony. Since marijuana possession was a felony, the police could stop and search any long-haired young man, which is exactly what happened to Reubens.

Rubenfeld emphasized the arrest had nothing to do with being queer, but rshe emembered how cruel the gossip became. "One of Paul's artsy friends from school asked me afterward, 'Well, were they doing it?' I was like, how dare you? I mean, I had an idea what he meant, but I was so offended."

She believes her brother came out to their parents around that time, though it was largely glossed over.

“Then when I went off to college, Paul wrote me a letter coming out to me,” she recollected. “He wrote, ‘I am the same brother I was before you read that,’ and that really impacted me. It made me think more about myself. I didn’t want to be gay. I wanted to go into politics, and in the early ’70s, you couldn’t be a lesbian and be in politics. By the way, I still have that letter.”

The moment launched years of inner conflict for Rubenfeld, who later came out and embraced advocacy as her life’s work. “Paul knew I was a lesbian when I came out to the family. We talked about it, and I think that was an issue between us, because I could be really out, and he couldn’t. I told him all the time, ‘Paul, I know gay men in your social class in L.A. who understand the closet. You could meet healthy, normal gay men.’ But he didn’t want that.”

Reubens’s early romance with a man named Guy Brown is shown in the documentary, including footage of their L.A. apartment in the 1970s. “I visited him that summer, I think it was 1974,” Rubenfeld said. “He seemed happy. But Paul made a choice to push that relationship aside to focus on his career.”

There were other pressures,too. Their father, who Rubenfeld described as “pretty macho,” had a complicated influence over his son. “Paul was always working for my dad’s approval. My dad once asked him, ‘Do you want to play house, or do you want a career?’ And that stuck with Paul. But he also told him, ‘If you’re going to be homosexual, be the best homosexual you can be.’ I have no doubt he said that.”

Even in crisis, Reubens kept things close to the chest. After his 1991 arrest in a Florida adult theater made national headlines, Reubens called Rubenfeld to offer a PR playbook. “He told me not to talk to the media, to expect them at my office. He was very upset, but he talked more about damage control than feelings.”

Then it got worse when Paul was investigated in 2002 for alleged possession of child pornography, charges that were ultimately reduced and were rooted in misunderstood materials. His public image was nearly shattered. But for his sister Abby, the pain of that time went far beyond the headlines.

“It just felt like Paul was being targeted,” she said. “Like, go after some other celebrity. Paul was a collector, some would say a hoarder. He had scores of storage units filled with boxes he hadn’t even opened. A lot of what was found, I truly believe, he didn’t even know was there.”

In the wake of the investigation, Abby recalls people contacting her trying to gain access to her brother’s vintage gay erotica collection, legal material that had been conflated in the public mind with something far more sinister. “It wasn’t kiddie porn,” she said flatly. “But the damage was done.”

The Reubens family felt gagged by circumstance and media pressure. Reubens, ever private, didn’t speak out to defend himself, and Rubenfeld remembers the aching injustice of that silence. “He couldn’t even speak out. None of us could,” she said. “To tell the truth, I wanted to sue. One of the tabloids, the National Enquirer, ran something implying I had been a closeted lesbian, like ‘Another Pee-wee Herman secret exposed.’ That was damaging to me because I’ve always been out, and for what I do, suggesting I was ever in the closet was so wrong.”

But the family decided not to pursue legal action. “We didn’t want more publicity,” she said. “But it was so unfair. He was made out to be a pervert, a child molester, and he was the opposite. He was so good with kids, so protective. He tried to keep people from even thinking those kinds of thoughts. That’s why it cut so deep.”

That guardedness continued after he was diagnosed with cancer, which he kept secret from the public. “He just didn’t share personal stuff, even with us,” Rubenfeld said.

Still, the sibling bond endured. Reubens stayed with their father through the final months of his life, calling every week and caring for him in Florida. “He put a ton of time and energy into building that relationship,” Rubenfeld said. “His actions, again, spoke much louder than his words.”

Related: Pee-wee Herman Actor Paul Reubens Dead at 70

It wasn’t until Reubens's final days that Abby felt a glimmer of justice. In Matt Wolf’s documentary, Reubens was finally given space to speak and to share his voice, literally and figuratively. “I'm so glad he got to say what he said,” Abby said, referencing the voice mail Paul left for Wolf the night before he died. “That voice, that message, that was the last time I heard him. After that, I don’t remember anything in the movie after hearing that. It was just so devastating. But I’m glad he finally got the chance to tell his side. That mattered.”

Looking back, she sees her brother's legacy as bittersweet. A brilliant performer who made generations of kids laugh while hiding his own deepest truth.

“My guess is he was happy with Guy,” she said softly. “But maybe not, because he wasn’t fulfilled. His career was such a driving force.”

Rubenfeld spoke tenderly about her brother’s final resting place, reflecting on his deep capacity for care, especially for animals. “He really did love what he did for animals,” she said. When she visited his grave in Los Angeles, she was struck by how fitting the location was.

“He was cremated, but his ashes are being buried in this beautiful spot by a lake, with geese and goslings and turtles and even peacocks,” she recalled. “It just felt right.”

But what made it all the more perfect to her was who was nearby.

“About 10 feet from Paul’s grave is Burt Reynolds’s grave, with this big pedestal and a cowboy hat,” she said, laughing. “It’s so perfect that Paul will be buried next to this ultimate macho man, because that was kind of his type. It just feels totally perfect to me, and I wonder if he picked it himself.”

Now, as the documentary opens a window into Reubens's private world, Rubenfeld hopes it will help others understand not only the cost of fame, but the courage of quiet survival.

“Paul never stopped being my brother,” she reflected. “And he never stopped trying to be the best version of himself, even if he had to keep parts of that self hidden.”