It might sound like the stuff of Hollywood urban legends but it was a role on the kids’ TV show Pee-wee’s Playhouse as Cowboy Curtis that helped make award-winning actor Laurence Fishburne a star. Pee-wee’s Playhouse was by no means Fishburne’s first rodeo, of course. He’s been acting since he was a child and counts the 1975 film Cornbread, Earl And Me and a 12-episode stint on soap opera One Life To Live among his early credits.
After lying about his age, a 14-year-old Laurence Fishburne landed a part in Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now as young G.I. Tyrone ‘Mr. Clean’ Miller which led to roles in other Coppola films including Rumble Fish and The Cotton Club during the 1980s. Bit parts in Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-nominated film The Color Purple and TV shows like Hill Street Blues and Miami Vice followed but his recurring role on Pee-wee’s Playhouse introduced Fishburne to a wider audience and helped put him on the map.
Laurence Fishburne’s Pee-wee’s Playhouse character Cowboy Curtis featured in 17 episodes over the show’s five-season run between 1986 and 1990. A far cry from the more dramatic roles he’s known for nowadays, Cowboy Curtis was one of many wacky characters on the show. With his Jheri curl hairstyle, pink shirt and purple cow print chaps Cowboy Curtis wasn’t your typical cowboy, but on a show that featured a talking chair - aptly called Chairy - a disembodied genie and an anthropomorphic Pteranodon, he fit right in.
Fishburne wasn’t the only young talent to get their start on Pee-wee’s Playhouse either. Actors including Sons Of Anarchy star Jimmy Smits, Russian Doll co-creator and star Natasha Lyonne and Golden Globe-winner S. Epatha Merkerson all had parts on the show. Behind the scenes, metalhead and future horror movie director Rob Zombie worked as a production assistant and future filmmaker John Singleton – then a student – worked as a security guard.
It was on the set of Pee-wee’s Playhouse that Laurence Fishburne and John Singleton met which would lead to the latter casting him in his Oscar-nominated directorial debut Boyz N The Hood. His role as a father raising his son in South Central Los Angeles won him critical acclaim and catapulted him to stardom. After that came Fishburne’s Academy Award-nominated turn as Ike Turner in What’s Love Got To Do With It and his iconic role as Morpheus in The Matrix trilogy, followed by a three-year stint on CSI and his role as FBI agent Jack Crawford on Hannibal which won him a Saturn Award. The rest, as they say, is history but Laurence Fishburne has Pee-wee’s Playhouse to thanks – at least in part – for his successful career.