The rumors of Steve Burns ’ death have been greatly exaggerated. While rumblings of the original Blue’s Clues host’s sudden demise after his 2002 departure from the kids’ series lingered on the internet for years, Steve is very much still alive and well. The rumors —which detailed several apparent tragedies Steve supposedly faced—did, however, take their toll.
“Everyone though I was dead for a while,” he told the New York Times in an interview published Sept. 18, noting it made him a kind of urban legend. “That hurt, to be honest.
And it kind of messed me up because that was happening while the internet was just sort of beginning to internet. No one, including myself, was kind of prepared for the degree of consensus that it represented.” It was so general a consensus, that even the occasional public appearances didn’t seem to mitigate the rumor.
As Steve explained, “When a zillion, trillion people all think you’re dead for 15 years, it freaks you out.” It’s part of the reason the now-50-year-old—who spends most of his time living largely off the grid in upstate New York—chose to make his return to the public eye in the form of social media. It was a video shared by Nick Jr.
on X, then-Twitter, in 2021 that saw Steve back in his signature, green-striped rugby shirt addressing his now-adult viewers that first tugged at the heart strings of former Blue’s Clues fans. “I didn’t write it,” Steve said of the video that saw the alum explain h.