‘Blue’s Clues’ host checks in after ‘Quiet on Set,’ making grown fans emotional
Malia Mendez March 22, 2024 Occasionally since 2021,
Former “Blue
‘
s Clue
‘
s” host Steve Burns has conducted therapeutic check-ins with his TikTok followers
occasionally since 2021
but a recent upload hit viewers harder than usual.
This week, Investigation Discovery released a four-part docuseries, Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, which revealed the toxic culture behind some of the most popular Nickelodeon shows of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
For many who were raised on the network’s programs, the documentary revised previously rosy
pictures childhood memories.of their childhoods.
In a video, uploaded Thursday, Burns asks viewers with a knowing gaze, Hey, Im checking in. Tell me, whats going on?
Then, for nearly a minute, he nods quietly as though listening to them respond. As the video draws to a close, he says a simple
,
OKOkay
, and after one last pause
,
finishes
with
, Al
l
right, well, its good to hear from you. And you look great, by the way.
The TikTok now has more than
over
3.5 million views, and nearly 30,000 users have left comments expressing everything from despair to gratitude.
After the Nickelodeon documentary Steve all I need is my blues clues to save whatever is left of this childhood I once had, one user wrote.
Steve checking up on the now grown up kids he left behind is another level of full circle moment, another penned.
While some shared what they
hadd
said to their screens, others admitted they couldnt do anything but cry.
Resharing the video on X
(formerly Twitter)
, one fan wrote, Steve from Blues Clues posting this after the Nickelodeon documentary, he knew exactly what we needed. The post has since garnered thousands of retweets.
Burns led Blues Clues from the shows premiere on Nick Jr. in 1996
to until
2002, when viewers were told his character was leaving for college.
Conspiracy theories surrounding Burns departure abounded, but in the end, the truth was not so complicated.
It was just simply time to go, Burns
told
in 2016
. 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.
It was only after he left that he began to confront some harder truths about that season of his life, he
told
in 2022.
I didnt know it yet, but I was the happiest depressed person in North America, Burns said. 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 continued,
I was always able to dig and find something that felt authentic to me that was good enough to be on the show
,” he said, “
but after years and years of going to the well without replenishing it, there was a cost.
After what Burns called a long period of healing following his exit from the childrens show, he recently returned to the Blues Clues universe in the Paramount+ revival series
,
Blues Clues and You, which debuted in 2019, and the 2022 movie Blue’s Big City Adventure.
Since reentering the public eye,
Burns he
told Variety
,
he
s has
taken great delight in speaking to college students about mental health and the resources he sought out to improve his own.
“Steve became my role model,” Burns said of his character from the show, “because he was not afraid to ask for help.”
