There’s a generation of adults who have a special place in their hearts for Nickelodeon’s Blue’s Clues, one of the best kids' shows of the 2000s, and specifically Steve Burns, the original host of the series. For many, he is an icon of their childhood, a face that radiates safety and security and comfort. However, he was also the subject of rumors, including one where many said he was dead. Now, he's opening up about all that and how it impacted his mental health.
In an appearance on the Soul Boom with Rainn Wilson podcast, Steve Burns talks openly about his battle with depression. It turns out that a significant portion of the weight on him traces back to an urban legend that claimed he had died. Burns explains…
I was in kind of the throes of this depression after I left the show, but 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 died.
I’m a little too old to have watched the show, though my kid has seen some of it after Blues Clues was rebooted. However, I absolutely remember the urban legend that the host had died via some sort of terrible circumstances.
Celebrity urban legends have always made the rounds online. While Burns indicates his depression was independent of the rumors, they certainly didn’t help his mental health. He continued…
I was a dead heroin addict, I had died of an overdose, and I had died of suicide, which is not what you want to hear when you’re severely clinically depressed.
Most of us probably don’t think a lot about the wild urban legends that have sprung up in the age of the internet, or what they truly mean to the people they concern. The idea that “Steve from Blue’s Clues is dead” could have just been a harmless rumor, but it turns out it was much bigger for Steve Burns.
The rumor became such a problem that even Nickelodeon took action to try and combat it. According to Burns…
When a gazillion people you’ve never met tell you that you’re dead, it’s bad when you are severely clinically depressed. And there was nothing I could do about this rumor, I mean, Nickelodeon didn’t like it either, so I would go on the Rosie O’Donnell show and be like ‘Hi, I’m still alive, and everyone thought I was dead.’
Steve Burns explains that after he left Blue’s Clues, his depression was so bad that he retreated to his house and rarely went anywhere. While he says he was able to, at least outwardly, manage his depression well enough that it never became a major problem.
He explained that the rumors never really went away amid all this either, saying:
After I left the show, this rumor continued, and it was one of the most common things people would say to me was ‘I thought you were dead.’
For whatever reason, perhaps because the show continued without him, the rumors of Steve Burns' death persisted. He tells Wilson that ultimately, when the world thinks you’re dead, you start to wonder if that’s the way it’s supposed to be. He said…
When a rumor like that persists for three or four years, it stops being funny. 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. Being an urban legend in that way is a thing that I think is difficult for almost anyone else in the world to understand.
Ultimately, Burns says he did have a “breakdown” moment where he realized he needed to do something.
In that moment, he credits his TV character for showing him the path forward…
It sounds so trite every time I say this, but it’s true. That is when Steve became my teacher… Every day on Blue’s Clues, I would sit in a chair and look at someone in the eye, and ask, 'Will you help me?’ And it wasn’t until I did that in my life, in my real life, that things changed.
Steve Burns says that once he got help, he learned that his issues were manageable. Burns is now a regular presence on social media, despite what the internet did to him, and he even returned to the Blue’s Clues franchise in 2022 for the movie Blue’s Big City Adventure (available with a Paramount+ subscription), where he appeared alongside the other two hosts of the show.
Steve appears to be in a much better place, which is wonderful news for those people for whom he means a great deal. He made countless lives a little brighter, and it’s good to know that includes his own.
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