Children’s TV star reveals heartbreaking impact of ‘everyone thinking that he’d died’
'It stops being funny.'
Blue’s Clues legend Steve Burns has revealed the devastating impact of internet rumours claiming he’d died.
The 51-year-old former children’s TV star ended his six-year stint on the iconic Nick Jr.’s show – which saw him playing a fictionalised version of himself with the titular animated dog – in 2002 after over 100 episodes, with Donovan Patton taking over as his brother Joe.
Steve’s sudden departure sparked a wild online urban myth that he’d died, and he admitted as the years went on it stopped ‘being funny’.
‘When a rumour like that persists for three or four years, it stops being funny,’ he told Rainn Wilson’s Soul Bloom podcast. ‘When it persists for 10 years it feels like a cultural preference…
‘When it persists for 15 or 20 years, you start to feel like you’re supposed to be.’
Steve explained he was in the ‘throes of this depression’ after leaving the show, which made the morbid rumour even tougher to handle.
He starred in over 100 episodes of Blue’s Clues (Picture: PBS) His sudden departure sparked rumours he had died (Picture: Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images)‘What a lot of people don’t understand is that during the show, the internet was beginning to internet, and the world decided, or a large portion of the world decided, that I had died,’ he added.
‘[It’s] not what you want to hear when you’re severely clinically depressed.’
He pointed out that as time went on, he found himself accepting the rumours.
He said: ‘I didn’t recognise me. Everyone thought I was dead, and eventually I started playing along.’
Steve previously opened up on how being ‘utterly and completely full of joy and wonder at all times’ as a fictionalised version of himself took its toll.
Speaking to Variety, he explained how he also ‘didn’t want to be boyish anymore’ as he got closer to his 30s.
He had a ‘long period of healing’ after leaving the series, and he stepped back from the public eye, which led to the death rumour.
‘That rumour was so persistent and so indelible that I assumed it was a cultural preference,’ he told the outlet in 2022. ‘I eventually just took the hint. I kept my head down and left public life.’
In 2021, he returned to Nickelodeon on the channel’s account on X, then known as Twitter, for Blue’s Clues’ 25th anniversary.
He said in the emotional video: ‘You remember how, when we were younger, we used to run around and hang out with Blue and find clues and talk to Mr. Salt and freak out about the mail and do all the fun stuff?
So about that time Steve went off to college… #BluesClues25 Nick Jr. (@nickjr) September 7, 2021
‘And then one day, I was like, “Oh hey, guess what? Big news. I’m leaving! This is my brother Joe, he’s your new best friend.”
‘Then I got on a bus and I left, and we didn’t see each other for, like, a really long time. Can we just talk about that?’
He pointed how ‘abrupt’ it was, before reflecting on how far viewers have come since he ‘went to college’.
‘Look at you! And look at all you have done and all you have accomplished in all that time! It’s just so amazing, right?
Steve resurfaced publicly in 2021 (Picture: Rob Latour/REX/Shutterstock)‘I mean, we started out with clues and now, it’s what? Student loans, and jobs, and families. And some of it has been kind of hard, you know? I know you know,’ he continued.
‘‘I guess I just wanted to say that, after all these years, I never forgot you…ever. And I’m super glad we’re still friends.
‘Thanks for listening. You look great, by the way. Whatever it is you’re doing, it’s working.’
Has has since written and directed some episodes for the Blue’s Clues revival, and appeared with Donovan on Paramount+’s Blue’s Big City Adventure.
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