Former “Blue’s Clues” actor Steve Burns revealed he had doubts about the show’s success.
In an interview with People, Burns spoke about the 1996 show and said he “didn’t think it would work at all.”
He added he thought the concept for “Blue’s Clues,” where he played opposite an animated blue dog, who helped him uncover clues, ”was simply too strange and too breakthrough, and I didn’t think the kids would talk back to the TV screen.”
“These are all the things that I liked about it, but I didn’t think that they would work. I doubted it. I was skeptical that they would work. I liked that it was kind of the Rocky Horror Children’s Show,” he shared.
After Burns shot the pilot for the show, he remembered thinking it was “deeply weird television.”
“Then it aired, and it became immediately No. 1, and it had this global reach and everything. It always felt like a very small and personal experience to me,” he explained.
Burns also spoke about the impact that the show had on him.
“It was me and a camera. And in my mind, it was me and a conversation with one other human being. So it always felt very small to me,” he said. He also said the show feels “special” to him.
In an interview with Variety, Burns shared why he decided to leave the show in 2001.
“I didn’t know it yet, but I was the happiest depressed person in North America. I was struggling with severe clinical depression the whole time I was on that show. It was my job to be utterly and completely full of joy and wonder at all times, and that became impossible,” he said.
Continuing, he said, “I was always able to dig and find something that felt authentic to me that was good enough to be on the show, but after years and years of going to the well without replenishing it, there was a cost.”
On Nov. 16, Burns starred in a movie titled “Blue’s Big City Adventure” alongside fellow “Blue’s Clues” stars Donovan Patton and Joshua Dela Cruz.
