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Steve Burns Says He Left ‘Blue’s Clues’ Because He Was Losing His Hair

By Victoria Miller
Published on: 22:57 PST, Dec 16, 2016

Steve Burns hosted Nickelodeon’s Blue’s Clues for seven years, but when his character left in 2002 to “go to college,” the kiddie show was never the same. Over the past decade, Burns has been the victim of a plethora of internet death hoaxes. Rumors of a death by drug overdose or a car crash repeatedly turn up, but Burns is very much alive, and in a new interview with the Huffington Post, he set the record straight about why he quit the preschool-themed show.

While his music career has also been blamed for his departure from Blue’s Clues, Burns now confirms his exit from the show, which he hosted from 1996 to 2002, had a lot more to do with aging than anything. In the past, Steve Burns said he didn’t want to go bald on a kids’ show, and he confirmed that in the HuffPo interview.

“I left the show because it was just simply time to go,” Steve told HuffPo.

“I was pretty much playing a boyish, older-brotherish kind of character on the show. I was getting older; I was losing my hair; a lot of the original gangsters on the show, like the people who created it, were all moving on to other careers. It just felt like time. I just had a gut feeling like it was time to go.”

Twenty years after Blues Clues’ debut, Steve Burns says his time on the Nick series feels “surreal.” It also makes him feel a bit old.

“To know that people who watched Blue’s Clues now have children that watch Blue’s Clues is a real brain-burner, that’s for sure,” Burns said.

These days, Steve works behind-the-scenes as a voiceover guy.

“I’ve been earnestly balding, which takes up a lot more time than people think, and also I’m a voice-over guy,” Steve said. “If you hear a guy on TV that tries to sell you insurance and sounds like the guy from Blue’s Clues, that’s me.

Burns also admitted that people do not recognize him as the guy from Blue’s Clues anymore.

“I have to convince people,” Steve said. “No, I look much more like Moby if he had a real problem with pad Thai than I do like Steve from Blue’s Clues. I really do. I’ve gotten into arguments with people about it. They just don’t believe that it’s me. I don’t believe that it’s me.”

While he still sounds the same, Burns points out that 20 years later, he doesn’t look the same. Steve was 29-years-old when he left Blue’s Clues.

“First of all, I am much shorter than anyone expects me to be. I’m bald now. I was rail thin on that show, and I was a child, basically. I’m 43-years-old now. I look nothing like that, which I think is kind of fun.”

Steve Burns says he still owns a big piece of Blue’s Clues memorabilia: The Thinking Chair.

“I have the original one,” Burns said. “They gave it to me on my 25th birthday, and it sits in my study.”

Steve Burns also revealed that his music career actually came after he left Blue’s Clues, calling it ” a wonderful dream come true, [a] hobby thing that happened after” the show. While Steve didn’t leave Blue’s Clues to pursue a career in music, the music industry kind of found him. Burns previously released the album Songs for Dust Mites. Now, he has a new kiddie record in the works, titled Foreverywhere, which he describes as the [Guns ‘N Roses] “Chinese Democracy for kids records.”

In a previous interview with Nerve magazine, Burns said people have embraced him as a musician because he just tries to be himself.

“If I were out there saying, please, no, don’t look at me as Steve from Blue’s Clues, look at me as this indie rock godlet, I’d be failing,” Buns said. “That’s a boring story. That’s what everyone expects you to do. What I’m saying is, no, that’s me and I’m this guy. It’s not one or the other, it’s both.”

As for any future kiddie show endeavors, Steve sounds like he has hung up his hat on that for good.

“I don’t know how that would work,” Burns told HuffPo. “That’s such a fun idea, though. How would that work? Steve has gone to college and he majors in shapes and colors and he’s in the middle of doing his thesis on shapes and colors and he’s come back very professorial.”

[Featured Image by Scott Gries/Getty Images]

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