Calling the large Nick Jr. sequence, which he starred in from 1996 to 2002, “my aspect hustle without end,” the beloved youngsters’s tv star shares how he wasn’t even anticipating to be on digital camera 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 one of the crucial 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 participating movies on Instagram — typically simply “listening” — opened up about how a lot serving to Blue discover clues and remedy 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 known as Blue’s Clues “my aspect hustle without end.”
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He defined that even because the present was changing into a blockbuster success for Nick Jr. — finally 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 mentioned that the industrial voiceover work “type of sustained me, however man, it was grim.” On the time, Burns mentioned he “lived in a hallway (in a NYC house). I constructed like slightly shelf in a hallway between two tiny bedrooms.”
As for a way he fell into Blue’s CluesBurns instructed The Workplace alum that it occurred “totally by chance.”
In reality, he thought he was auditioning for one more voice-over roll when he first auditioned for what would develop into Blue’s Cluesa hybrid live-action/animated sequence 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 could be the precise reverse.
He joked that the one live-action auditions he was taking at the moment early in his profession had been “severe actor auditions” for exhibits like Regulation & 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 digital camera within the room, and I believed, ‘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 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 youngsters, you recognize? And I simply (thought), there’s no manner I can try this,” he added. “I might 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 quite a lot of it carrying over into the present, together with his signature transfer of stepping nearer to the digital camera 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 finally 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 might assist him, nevertheless it 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 known 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 might hear from individuals. ‘Oh, I believed you had been useless. Didn’t you die?'” he recalled. “And when it persists for 10 years, it seems like a cultural desire … you begin to really feel such as you’re presupposed to be.”
He mentioned he slipped into what he is dubbed “the grey” of his life for a few decade, gaining 50 kilos, by no means leaving his home, and simply embracing the concept that if he was “useless” … “ultimately I began taking part in alongside. , 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 mentioned that the time away had allowed all of them to develop up and transfer on, however he needed them to know “that, in any case these years, I by no means forgot you. Ever. And I am tremendous glad we’re nonetheless associates.” 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.
