Steve Burns has taken his active listening to TikTok more than 20 years after his exit from Nickelodeon’s ‘Blue’s Clues’

(L): Steve Burns on an episode of ‘Blue’s Clues’ in 1996 ; (R) Actor Steve Burns attends the “Blue’s Big City Adventure” premiere event on Nov. 12, 2022, in New York City. Photo: © Nickelodeon Network and Bryan Bedder/Getty

Steve Burns from Blue’s Clues might not be a children’s show host anymore, but he still wants you to tell him what’s going on.

The former Blues Clues star got his start on Nickelodeon’s 1996 hit show at 22 years old. The program gained immediate success and reached No. 1 shortly after airing, much to Steve’s surprise.

“It always felt like a very small and personal experience to me,” he told we in December 2022. “It was me and a camera. And in my mind, it was me and a conversation with one other human being.”

In 2000, he abruptly left the show when his character went to college and passed the role down to his younger brother, Joe, played by Donovan Patton.

Years later, Steve revealed the truth behind his departure, opening up about the internal struggles he was facing at the time: “It was my job that day to provide America’s children with self-esteem, but I didn’t always have my own approval,” he told Today in April 2024.

He went on a years-long healing journey and found himself back on the path of listening to others — this time on TikTok.

So where is Steve from Blue’s Clues today? Here’s everything to know about the former television show host and how he’s made a career of prioritizing mental health now.

Who is Steve from Blue’s Clues?

Actor Steve Burns on a 1996 episode of ‘Blue’s Clues.’.© Nickelodeon Network

Steve is the former host of Nickelodeon’s 1996 hit show Blue’s Clues. He was born on Oct. 9, 1973, and grew up in Pennsylvania. When he was 22, Steve moved to New York to pursue an acting career, one that he thought would look much different than landing the leading role on a children’s show alongside an animated blue dog.

“The persona was not what any 22-year-old dude would have wanted,” he told Variety in November 2022. “I moved to New York to be a much, quote-unquote, ‘cooler’ thing — an Al Pacino-Dustin Hoffman hybrid,” he said.

However, Steve liked the vision, and relished talking to the camera, what he described as “like a Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton thing.”

But, that didn’t mean he wasn’t skeptical.

“I didn’t think it would work at all,” Steve told we, adding that he “thought it was simply too strange and too breakthrough” to believe kids would talk back to the screen.

As it turns out, it wasn’t — the show became a hit and ran for over six seasons.

Why did Steve leave Blue’s Clues?

‘Blue’s Clues’ host Steve Burns with Blue the Dog on a 1996 episode the Nickelodeon show.© Nickelodeon Network

In 2000, the actor left the show with little explanation when his character went to college. It wasn’t until 2021 that he addressed his departure in a video posted to Nick Jr.’s X (formerly Twitter) account.

“You remember how when we were younger and we used to run around and hang out with Blue and find clues and talk to Mr. Salt and freak out about the mail and do all the fun stuff, and then one day I was like, ‘Oh hey, guess what? Big news, I’m leaving!’ ” Steve said. “I realize that was kind of abrupt.”

While his character had left to go to college, there were much more complicated feelings going on behind the scenes. He opened up to Variety years later about the severe depression he struggled with during and after his time on Blue’s Clues.

“I didn’t know it yet, but I was the happiest depressed person in North America,” he said. “It was my job to be utterly and completely full of joy and wonder at all times, and that became impossible … after years and years of going to the well without replenishing it, there was a cost.”

The actor later explained to Today that he spent a long period of time healing, with help from one special person: his Blue’s Clues character, whom he allowed to “become [his] greatest teacher.”

“I simply did what Steve did every single day, which was stand there and look someone in the eye and ask, ‘Will you help me?’ ” he continued. “That is the great lesson that Steve taught me: There is no shame in asking for help.”

In September 2024, he told The New York Times that the exhaustion also caught up to him and prompted him to leave.

“I wish there was a sexier answer. You have to keep in mind that the show was all filmed on a green screen,” he explained. “I was in every take of every shot, every day, with no other actors or props or anything, just sort of standing in a void for years and years.”

His time away from the spotlight, though, prompted death rumors — which took an even bigger toll on his mental health. “When a zillion, trillion people all think you’re dead for 15 years, it freaks you out,” he told the outlet.

Has Steve reprised his Blue’s Clues role?

Former ‘Blue’s Clues’ host Steve Burns with latter ‘Blue’s Clues’ hosts, Josh Dela Cruz and Donovan Patton at the 95th Annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on Nov. 25, 2021, in New York City. Erik Pendzich/Shutterstock

Steve reunited with Blue and joined the new cast members while reprising his role in Blue’s Big City Adventure, which was released on Paramount+ in November 2022.

Stepping back into the role 20 years later naturally meant that there would be some changes to his character, but Steve was a fan of how he grew up.

“I’ve never enjoyed being Steve more than I do now,” he told Variety. “I get to wear a trenchcoat. It’s like Grover-meets-Columbo — a clown character. That’s really freeing somehow.”

Filming the movie led Steve to form a friendship with Patton and Joshua Dela Cruz, who took over as stars of the show when he left.

“We really are friends. We actually do see each other socially. And we would be friends even if we weren’t on the show, I think, if we met,” he told we

In May 2023, Steve reprised his role again in an episode titled “The Case of the Missing Thinking Chair.”

What has Steve said about his Blue’s Clues legacy?

Former ‘Blue’s Clues’ host Steve Burns speaks onstage at Los Angeles Comic Con on Dec. 03, 2022.Chelsea Guglielmino/WireImage

Although Steve is no longer hosting Blue’s Clues, he has opened up about how he continues to carry the legacy through his work. In March 2024, he posted a now-viral TikTok video “checking in” on his followers, asking them to tell him what was going on.

He told Today that posting that clip was his way of carrying on the “philosophy” of Blue’s Clues, which was “always about respect, and always about communicating with the home viewer from a place of understanding and without condescension.”

“Back in the day, that meant talking about shapes and colors and graham crackers, but if you simply scale that up, now we’re talking about the pandemic and student loans and adulting,” he explained. “We’re talking about how difficult it is to move through this life as an adult person, but also how wonderful it is.”

Where is Steve now?

Steve Burns takes a selfie showing a new Blue’s Clues movie billboard in Times Square in NYC on Nov. 13, 2022.Steve Burns/ Instagram

After spending more than half his life in New York, Steve told The New York Times that he had relocated to an “off-grid” mountain in the Catskills.

“I harvest all of my own photons every day, so I’m not connected to the electrical grid in any way,” he explained before adding that there is, however, a supermarket nearby. “I actually wish that I was a little more remote than I am.”

After years of battling depression and sifting through the death rumors and negativity online, he wondered if he could “use the internet backward.” Rather than fueling the negativity, he chose to use social media in a positive way.

To that end, Steve first joined TikTok in 2021, asking his viewers for help.

“Hi out there! It’s me, Steve,” the actor said in his first video. “I don’t know how to use TikTok at all. I kind of don’t even know what it is. If you could tell me in the comments, thank you.”

Eventually, he found his footing and has since built a platform of millions of followers. The former host often posts videos with few words and a lot of listening — telling his followers to “tell me everything” — much like his Blue’s Clues character would.

Sometimes, he doesn’t say anything at all to the camera. Following the 2024 presidential election, a video of him simply breathing amassed over 6 million views.

But having a platform again has also made him worry about his role in his viewer’s lives.

“I worry that these TikToks are making me seem like a therapist or someone who has some kind of greater understanding,” he told Today. “My hope is that I just come off as a fellow passenger on the struggle bus, an ally.”

In addition to his social media presence, he is a musician and even wrote and sang the theme song for Young Sheldon. He has also been speaking about mental health at universities and teased to The New York Times that he would be releasing a podcast.