Calling the huge Nick Jr. collection, which he starred in from 1996 to 2002, “my aspect hustle ceaselessly,” the beloved youngsters’s tv star shares how he wasn’t even anticipating to be on digicam when he auditioned.
For a technology of followers, Steve Burns is the voice (and face) of consolation. The beloved first host of Nickelodeon’s Blue’s Clues from 1996 to 2002, Steve was one of the vital well-known faces on tv. However you would not have identified it from his paychecks.
The beloved star, who nonetheless brings his Millennial followers consolation together with his partaking movies on Instagram — usually simply “listening” — opened up about how a lot serving to Blue discover clues and resolve mysteries actually paid, and the way he did not even know what he was auditioning for when he confirmed up.
Making an look on Rainn Wilson’s Soul Growth podcast, Burns referred to as Blue’s Clues “my aspect hustle ceaselessly.”
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He defined that even because the present was changing into a blockbuster success for Nick Jr. — in the end spawning an ever-expanding line of branded merchandise — “Each waiter I ever knew made extra money than I did for the primary many seasons of that present.”
So if that was his “aspect hustle,” how did he pay the payments? “My actual gig was, I used to be a voice-over man,” he instructed Wilson. “I fell into that early.”
He stated that the business voiceover work “sort of sustained me, however man, it was grim.” On the time, Burns stated he “lived in a hallway [in a NYC apartment]. I constructed like a bit shelf in a hallway between two tiny bedrooms.”
As for the way he fell into Blue’s Clues, Burns instructed The Workplace alum that it occurred “totally accidentally.”
Actually, he thought he was auditioning for one more voice-over roll when he first auditioned for what would turn into Blue’s Clues, a hybrid live-action/animated collection that noticed Burns because the solely actual determine in an illustrated world. All the best way up till the second he walked in, Burns was pondering it might be the precise reverse.
He joked that the one live-action auditions he was taking at the moment early in his profession had been “critical actor auditions” for reveals like Legislation & Order and Murder: Life on the Road.
When he received the phrase about this new Nickelodeon present, the then 22-year-old thought it “was going to be the voice of a cartoon on a youngsters’s tv present.” However that is not what it was in any respect.
“I went to the audition, and once I received there, there was a digicam within the room, and I believed, ‘Oh s–t, I higher do one thing,'” Burns stated. “And so I regarded on the script, and I figured … I’m going to behave the s–t out of this.”
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He admitted that had he identified it was for a reside efficiency position beforehand, he by no means would have gone, “not solely as a result of I used to be a pretentious younger man on the time — that was a part of it — but additionally as a result of youngsters’s tv had by no means occurred to me.”
“I didn’t even know any children, you realize? And I simply [thought], there’s no manner I can try this,” he added. “I’d have stated ‘No, no, that’s a mistake.'” Fortunately, he did not, and regardless of having lengthy hair and a cigarette pack in his audition, he did land the half.
He shared a little bit of the magic he created in that audition, with quite a lot of it carrying over into the present, together with his signature transfer of stepping nearer to the digicam to create an intimacy with the younger viewers.
Whereas he by no means anticipated to be on-camera in a children present, Burns definitely did “act the s–t out of it” for six years, selecting up a Daytime Emmy Award nomination in 2001, earlier than he in the end stepped away from the present, leaving his younger followers shocked.
Burns has beforehand opened up about his depressive episode shortly earlier than and after his departure, however the actor dug deep with Wilson about his inner struggles.
He shared that on daily basis he would ask his viewers if they’d assist him, but it surely wasn’t till he requested that query in his actual life that he started to show issues round. Till that second, he was in what he referred to as “the grey” as he handled all types of rumors, together with that he was useless — rumors he stated a few of his household even believed at instances.
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“[That] was one thing I’d hear from folks. ‘Oh, I believed you had been useless. Didn’t you die?'” he recalled. “And when it persists for 10 years, it appears like a cultural choice … you begin to really feel such as you’re speculated to be.”
He stated he slipped into what he is dubbed “the grey” of his life for a couple of decade, gaining 50 kilos, by no means leaving his home, and simply embracing the concept if he was “useless” … “finally I began taking part in alongside. You already know, that was the technique … possibly I’m.”
With the help of remedy, Burns made his manner again into the general public eye, reconnecting with each his unique Blue’s Clues followers, and even with the revival present, Blues Clues & You! He is written for the favored new present, hosted by Josh Dela Cruz, and even appeared on-camera as his fictional alter-ego.
In 2021, because the world was coping with the emotional pressure of the COVID-19 pandemic, Burns appeared on social media with a message for his longtime followers who grew up with him, acknowledging that his exit from Blue’s Clues was fairly “abrupt.”
He stated that the time away had allowed all of them to develop up and transfer on, however he needed them to know “that, in spite of everything these years, I by no means forgot you. Ever. And I am tremendous glad we’re nonetheless pals.” Since that point, he is made common drop-ins on his social with calming movies the place he asks his followers how issues are going, after which quietly “listens” as they share.
