Calling the large Nick Jr. collection, which he starred in from 1996 to 2002, “my facet hustle ceaselessly,” the beloved youngsters’s tv star shares how he wasn’t even anticipating to be on digicam when he auditioned.
For a era 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 probably the most well-known faces on tv. However you would not have recognized it from his paychecks.
The beloved star, who nonetheless brings his Millennial followers consolation along with his participating movies on Instagram — usually simply “listening” — opened up about how a lot serving to Blue discover clues and clear up 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 facet hustle ceaselessly.”
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He defined that even because the present was turning 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 “facet 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 mentioned that the industrial voiceover work “sort of sustained me, however man, it was grim.” On the time, Burns mentioned he “lived in a hallway [in a NYC apartment]. I constructed like just a little shelf in a hallway between two tiny bedrooms.”
As for a way he fell into Blue’s Clues, Burns instructed The Workplace alum that it occurred “totally accidentally.”
The truth is, he thought he was auditioning for an additional voice-over roll when he first auditioned for what would develop into Blue’s Clues, a hybrid live-action/animated collection that noticed Burns because the solely actual determine in an illustrated world. All the way in which up till the second he walked in, Burns was pondering it will 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 exhibits like Legislation & Order and Murder: Life on the Avenue.
When he acquired 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 after I acquired there, there was a digicam within the room, and I assumed, ‘Oh s–t, I higher do one thing,'” Burns mentioned. “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 recognized it was for a stay 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 youngsters, ? And I simply [thought], there’s no manner I can do this,” he added. “I’d have mentioned ‘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 a whole 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 youngsters present, Burns actually 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 day by day 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 mentioned a few of his household even believed at instances.
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“[That] was one thing I’d hear from folks. ‘Oh, I assumed you had been useless. Didn’t you die?'” he recalled. “And when it persists for 10 years, it seems like a cultural choice … you begin to really feel such as you’re imagined to be.”
He mentioned 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” … “ultimately 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 authentic 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 mentioned that the time away had allowed all of them to develop up and transfer on, however he wished 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.
