Steve Burns is opening up about his struggle with depression during and after his time on Blue’s Clues — and the rumors of his death that persisted for more than a decade
On a new episode of the Soul Boom podcast, Burns said that while the show was still on the air, Internet rumors began to circulate that he had died
“And when it persists for 10 years, it feels like a cultural preference … you start to feel like you’re supposed to be,” Burns said
Steve Burns is opening up about battling depression amid the “urban legend” that kept surfacing while he was the host of Blue’s Clues: that he had died.
On the Thursday, May 1, 2025, episode of Rainn Wilson’s podcast Soul Boom, the now 51-year-old Burns explained, “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 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.”
Burns went on to acknowledge the many rumors that began to surface at the time — that he had died of an overdose, or of suicide — saying, “that is not what you want to hear when you’re severely clinically depressed.”
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“But when a gazillion people you’ve never met tell you that you’re dead … It’s bad when you’re severely clinically depressed,” Burns added. “And there was nothing I could do about this rumor. I mean, Nickelodeon didn’t like it either.”
The former Blue’s Clues host said that the network would have him make appearances on talk shows, just to dispel the rumors — but even that didn’t help. “So I would go on The Rosie O’Donnell Show and be like, ‘Hi. I’m still alive.’ I was on one talk show where I I danced with Busta Rhymes, and people still thought I was [dead] like, what else do you have to do?”
Chelsea Guglielmino/WireImage
Steve Burns in 2022
“And after I left the show, this rumor continued and one of the most common things people would say to me was: ‘I thought you were dead,’ ” Burns said.
After the show ended, Burns began to struggle with an addiction to alcohol, he said.
“I built a house in Brooklyn and never left it. I call it ‘the gray’ of my life,” he said on the podcast. “It was about 10 years where I did nothing but, like, drink couple of bottles of wine every night alone, watch MythBusters. … And just eat Pad Thai.”
Burns said that the cycle led to him no longer recognizing himself.
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“I gained like 50 pounds. I was completely unrecognizable. I didn’t recognize me,” he said. “And everyone thought I was dead. And eventually I started playing along. You know, that was the strategy was just … maybe I am.”
The rumors of his death got so bad at points that even his own family members believed them, with Burns explaining how his mother once called him “crying in line from an Arby’s” to ensure he was okay.
Of the rumors, Burns said: “My continued existence was an inconvenient truth, apparently … That was something I would hear from people. ‘Oh, I thought you were dead. Didn’t you die?’ And when it persists for 10 years, it feels like a cultural preference … you start to feel like you’re supposed to be.”
© Nickelodeon Network
Steve Burns on an episode of ‘Blue’s Clues’ in 1996
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Burns eventually sought help, however, telling Wilson on the podcast that he began working with a therapist and taking advice from his own former character.
“It just sounds so trite every time I say this, but it’s true. That is when Steve became my teacher,” Burns said, referring to his character on Blue’s Clues, who had the same name as him. “It’s so woo-woo to say, but it’s real. 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.”
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