Paul Reubens was known for playing Pee-wee Herman — but he also had a legacy at Disney theme parks

• Paul Reubens is best known for playing Pee-wee Herman, but he also had a role at Disney theme parks.
• In the '80s, he voiced Captain Rex, a droid who led parkgoers through the original Star Tours ride.
• Though the ride has changed over the years, you can still find Reubens' character in the parks.

Paul Reubens was an actor, comedian, writer, and producer best known for his character Pee-wee Herman. But he also played a beloved role at Disney theme parks.

In 2019, the official Pee-wee Herman blog reflected on Reubens' work voicing RX-24, a droid commonly known as Captain Rex, for the Star Tours rides at Disney World and Disneyland.

Though the ride has been majorly updated since it opened at Disneyland in 1987, the legacy of Reubens and his character remains.

The ride's history was discussed in a 2019 special episode of the "Star Wars"-themed podcast The ForeCast.

According to the audio documentary, Disney originally envisioned the simulator ride being piloted by a "grizzly" robot with the energy of a Vietnam War veteran. But George Lucas pushed for someone more "manic."

"We just kept going through a lot of what we would call the standard voiceover artists," Mark Eades, a former Imagineer and the casting director for the ride, said in the podcast. "It was pretty crazy. I mean, I was like at my wit's end. I couldn't figure it out. We tried 20-some-odd different people."

But that's when Eades saw Disney's 1986 film "Flight of the Navigator," which featured Reubens doing voiceover work as a robot.

"I'm sitting in the movie theater by myself going: 'That's our voice. Who the heck is it?'" Eades said. "So I watch the end credits and it says the voice is this fairly unknown person at the time, Paul Reubens."

Reubens had been filming the first season of "Pee-wee's Playhouse" when he was requested to work on Star Tours, Eades said.

Reubens, who also appeared on the podcast, said he only "vaguely" remembered recording the character's lines, which he completed in one day.

"I do remember that they gave me a lot of direction, that we did lots of variations on it, and that they definitely wanted it to be a Pee-wee Herman-esque voice," he said. 

Reubens also noted that, for many years, it was an "unintentional secret" that he voiced the character.

"People would always say, 'Wow that sounds like Pee-wee Herman,' or people would ask me about it, and I hate to say it, but this is way before the internet," he said. "Once the internet happened, I was credited immediately. People knew that was me."

RX-24 was eventually moved to the ride queue when Star Tours was updated in the 2010s, and later relocated again to be a droid DJ at Oga's Cantina in the Galaxy's Edge section of Hollywood Studios.

Reubens died on Sunday night at the age of 70 after a private cancer diagnosis.

"Last night we said farewell to Paul Reubens, an iconic American actor, comedian, writer and producer whose beloved character Pee-wee Herman delighted generations of children and adults with his positivity, whimsy and belief in the importance of kindness," his representatives wrote in statements posted to Facebook and Instagram.