Blue’s Clues vaulted Steve Burns to TV stardom… however didn’t give him typical TV-star pay. In a brand new interview, Burns mentioned he had a “grim” way of life whereas internet hosting the Nickelodeon youngsters’s present.
“I received Blue’s Clues early, however each waiter I ever knew made more cash than I did for the primary many seasons of that present,” Burns informed Rainn Wilson within the Could 1 episode of Wilson’s Soul Increase podcast.
Actually, Blue’s Clues was Burns’ “facet hustle perpetually,” since his actual gig was doing voiceovers for commercials. And that voiceover work “type of sustained” Burns as he lived in a hallway in a New York Metropolis condominium.
“However man, it was grim for a very long time,” he added.
On Blue’s Clues, Burns performed Steve, the on-air human who invitations viewers to assist him decipher clues left for them by a blue, animated canine.
Burns additionally recalled his audition for the present, saying he went in realizing Blue’s Clues was a youngsters’s present however considering it will be one other voiceover gig. “If I had recognized that it was to be the man on the present, I wouldn’t 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,” he mentioned. “I didn’t even know any children, you recognize? And I simply [thought], there’s no approach I can do this. I’d have mentioned ‘No, no, that’s a mistake.’”
However Burns, who had beforehand gotten commendations from famed performing instructor Uta Hagen, went for it anyway. “I assumed, ‘Oh, s***. I higher do one thing.’” he informed Wilson. “And so I appeared on the script, and, you recognize, I figured, ‘I’ve been blessed by Uta Hagen. I’m gonna act the s*** out of this.’”
Burns hosted Blue’s Clues from 1996 to 2002, and Donovan Patton took over because the on-screen host after his departure. Lately, Josh Dela Cruz presents Nickelodeon’s ongoing revival, Blue’s Clues & You!, with Burns making the occasional look.