Blue's Clues host Steve Burns addresses the impact death rumours had on his life

After Steve Burns left the Nickelodeon children’s show Blue’s Clues, there were rumours that he had passed away. In an interview with The New York Times, he said: “I was the recipient of a negative internet rumor for a long time. Everyone thought I was dead for a while. I was kind of an urban legend. And 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.”

Steve Burns also told The New York Times that “When a zillion, trillion people all think you’re dead for 15 years, it freaks you out. I just kind of wondered, Is it possible to use the internet backward? Instead of creating micro-harm in aggregate, that is actually corrosive, can we just use it in positive ways?”

The death rumours surrounding Steve Burns was one of the reasons the TV star, who is now 50, decided to spend a lot of his time living off the grid in New York. In 2021, Steve Burns addressed his ‘abrupt’ exit in a video.

Steve Burns shared the video to X, then Twitter in honour of the 25th anniversary of Blue’s Clues and said: “You remember how, when we were younger, 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?”

He went on to say “And then one day, I was like, ‘Oh hey guess what? Big news. I’m leaving! This is my brother Joe. He’s your new best friend.’ And then I got on a bus and I left and we didn't see each other for, like, a really long time? Can we just talk about that?”

Steve Burns addressed the video he made in his interview with The New York Times and said: “I just kind of stood in front of the camera and said what was on my mind. The concept there was I wanted to continue the conversation that I started a zillion years ago with everyone. Let’s just scale it up, you know, now that we’re much more like peers.”

Steve Burns is now on TikTok and has nearly three million followers on the platform.