I, like many youthful millennials, grew up on “Blue’s Clues.” Inside a sure, important demographic, it is a virtually common expertise — the form of ubiquitous cultural unifier that is more and more tough to search out within the stratified digital age. And like so many, I watched as Steve Burns, the unique star of the largely animated, direct-address-to-audience-driven Nickelodeon children’s show, walked away from it within the early 2000s, being changed by Donovan Patton as Steve’s youthful brother, Joe.
Within the wake of that departure, Burns grew to become the favourite conspiracy goal of an early Web, with rumors of his demise and causes for leaving the sequence — all drastically exaggerated — circulating always. Although he would sometimes pop again up in public to dispel these tales, he largely stored his head down, with a handful of smaller musical and onscreen tasks.
In more moderen years, with the “Blue’s Clues” revival sequence “Blue’s Clues & You,” Burns has extra publicly embraced his legacy as a kids’ TV icon, showing a number of occasions on the present and its related spin-off tasks, whereas additionally working behind the scenes in numerous capacities. He is additionally spoken extra overtly about his unique causes for leaving the present — a choice he beforehand attributed extra merely to him getting too previous for the half, however which he now says had extra to do with psychological well being points and the built-up burnout they brought about. Whereas his work on the present was not the reason for these considerations, Burns says they made it tough to proceed within the joyful position of TV companion.
Steve burned out, however not due to Blues Clues
From 1996 to 2002, Steve Burns might as effectively have been the face of academic kids’s programming. And whereas that position gave him a terrific sense of achievement, each on the time and now looking back, he ultimately determined to step away from “Blue’s Clues” for private causes.
The aesthetics of rising up and shedding his hair on a present the place he performed a perpetually youthful form of character was a part of the equation, Burns instructed Variety in a 2022 profile. “I wasn’t going to be boyish anymore,” he defined — each an acknowledgment of growing old and a want to maneuver onto new issues. However that wasn’t the basis of the selection. “I did not comprehend it but, however I used to be the happiest depressed individual in North America,” Burns instructed Selection. “I used to be battling extreme medical despair the entire time I used to be on that present. It was my job to be totally and utterly filled with pleasure and surprise always, and that grew to become inconceivable.”
After a time, that sense of burnout and his unaddressed drop in psychological wellness took its toll. “I used to be all the time in a position to dig and discover one thing that felt genuine to me that was ok to be on the present,” Burns defined, “however after years and years of going to the effectively with out replenishing it, there was a value.” Wanting again now, Burns instructed Selection that he can higher recognize the work he did on the present.
What has Steve Burns been as much as since Blues Clues?
Within the fast aftermath of his “Blue’s Clues” exit, Steve Burns began up a music profession, together with his debut indie rock album, “Songs for Dustmites,” being launched in 2003. One of many tracks from that report, “Mighty Little Man,” later grew to become the theme song of CBS’s hit “Big Bang Theory” spin-off/prequel “Young Sheldon.” Burns launched one other album of an analogous model in 2009 and a kids’s album, “Foreverywhere,” with Steven Drozd in 2017.
In more moderen years, Burns has additionally returned to the world of “Blue’s Clues,” serving as a author, director, and consulting producer on the revival sequence “Blue’s Clues & You” since 2019. He is additionally made a number of appearances as an older Steve on sure episodes, motion pictures and specials. You could have additionally heard his voice in numerous locations over time, as he continues to work as a VO performer and occasional onscreen actor.
Burns’ journey to higher consciousness and wellness has turn into an genuine a part of his fashionable picture, as exemplified in a viral 2021 video from Nick Jr. the place he briefly reprised the position of Steve to talk to his grown-up former viewers. “We began out with clues, and now it is what? Scholar loans, and jobs, and households, and a few of it has been form of arduous” he mentioned on the time in his traditional direct-address model to the digicam. “Have a look at all you could have achieved in all that point.”
Earlier in 2025, Burns began the podcast “Alive with Steve Burns,” which covers matters of wellness and tradition with a delicate strategy he instructed The New York Times he hoped might be “a counterpoint to the present manosphere.” It seems like a becoming position. “It’s extremely on model for me to not have the solutions,” Burns instructed Selection in 2022. “However Steve grew to become my position mannequin. As a result of he was not afraid to ask for assist.”
