The rumors of Steve Burns’ death have been greatly exaggerated.
While rumblings of the original Blue’s Clues host’s sudden demise after his 2002 departure from the kids’ series lingered on the internet for years, Steve is very much still alive and well.
The rumors—which detailed several apparent tragedies Steve supposedly faced—did, however, take their toll.
“Everyone thought I was dead for a while,” he told the New York Times in an interview published Sept. 18, noting it made him a kind of urban legend. “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.”
It was so general a consensus, that even the occasional public appearances didn’t seem to mitigate the rumor.
As Steve explained, “When a zillion, trillion people all think you’re dead for 15 years, it freaks you out.”
