An Interview with Steve burns

Stephanie: So, where are you? Where do you live now? Everything behind you looks gorgeous!

Steve: Upstate New York. I’m halfway up a mountain. And I love it. I love it more than I thought I would and I thought I’d like it a lot. 

Stephanie: Any hesitation before you went halfway up the mountain? Like unsure if you’re gonna like this?

Steve: Not really. I lived in NYC for like 27 years or something. And I admire NYC. I think it’s a profoundly important place on this globe. I think everyone should spend some time living there. I didn’t enjoy living there. It’s loud. And it’s crowded. And it smells like pee everywhere. But, I can’t let people hate on it. It’s too important. But, I grew up around frogs and trees. And I need frogs and trees. And now I have frogs and trees.

Stephanie: Yeah. Even though I live here, I think I like New York City more in theory than actually being here sometimes. Like, I like the idea of it. Like you said it’s very loud. I have a lot of hypervigilance living here. I’m never settled here. And I’ve lived here for years, and I still feel that way. Like, who’s gonna jump out and say something weird. I’m kind of a weirdo magnet, so that doesn’t help. 

Steve: Everything that’s novel you can find in New York City. If you want Himalayan dumplings at 3AM you can get them. But if you have to accept an object into your home, that can be impossible. 

Stephanie: It’s too true. 

So, I like to start with people’s childhoods. I think in this case that’s especially cool since you were a big part of everyone’s childhood. Were you an imaginative kid? Were you in your head a lot? What kind of things did you imagine?

Steve: I was a weird kid. 

Stephanie: What kind of weird?

Steve: I was 100% weird. Very solitary always. Always looking for quiet. I played alone a lot, happily. I wanted, I guess I was five years old, I wanted to be a ventriloquist. After that I very much wanted to be a mime. I don’t know why or how that happened. At some point I must have been watching PBS and thought, yeah that’s it right there. That’s the answer. That’s for me. I had very supportive parents. They encouraged these performance instincts of mine. I think I was probably a court jester in a previous lifetime. I learned to juggle in like eight minutes. 

Stephanie: Wow. Do you think that’s like the average? I feel like that’s fast, like way faster than the average? 

Steve: I mean, I think I’m exaggerating. I’m humble bragging about my juggling skills. But, I do learn quick. I would balance things on my face. I had these weird ass clown proclivities. I was kind of a sullen kid. Very Hamelty. A little bit melancholy and morose. That’s much more my actual personality than what I did on television. 

Stephanie: Weird question. Do you have a lot of existential crises? Like, do you think about our purpose a lot and what’re we doing here and that kind of stuff? 

Steve: Don’t you? I think about that all day long. I don’t understand people who don’t. 

Stephanie: I feel the same way! When you say you grew up with this Hamlet-esque demeanor, that was me too. Existential crises are something I keep going through, and I’m often like, does everyone think this way? Or is it just me?

Steve: No, they don’t. Rather than disdain those people I’m envious. I think it’s a sensitivity thing. Some people just have a certain sensitivity that makes the world hurt a little. That’s a gift I’ve come to realize. I do believe that. Once you learn to accommodate it. 

You know, the show is very much about mental health. And very much about my experience with long, untreated, clinical depression. 

Stephanie: Would you say that began to happen shortly after the show? During the show?

Steve: The whole time. Yeah. What’s interesting is, I’ve since kind of examined it in hindsight. Your early twenties is kind of when that happens for a lot of people. I had no idea what was going on. I just knew I was really together. I was the most together and calm. And then I got this show, and I fell apart. Because I knew I had a really good thing going on. And, I thought it was my fault. I thought I was doing something wrong. And depression isn’t always sadness, right? For me it was frustration. It manifested in a lot of, what we now call, imposter syndrome. I was convinced that I was the wrong guy and I wasn’t worthy of doing this. They should have had a child development specialist or a teacher. Certainly not me. They got the wrong guy here. That’s the way it sort of manifested. The whole time I was on the show my strategy was just to fight it. But you don’t fight depression, you collect it. And that’s what I was doing. I was dealing with clinical depression and my job was to exhibit boundless joy and curiosity and engagement and you can imagine that was hard. Because I was a kid, I wasn’t addressing anything in any real, meaningful way. 

Stephanie: So you would go in, shoot this show, and what happens after? You’re exhausted trying to keep it all together and what are you doing to cope?

Steve: First of all, I was in every take in every shot. I was the only human being in an entirely animated world. And we were working like 12 hour days. We were very young, all of us kind of making this up as we were going. So the day would have been exhausting for anyone. But, yeah, on those days, I was just in a chemical dearth of serotonin and dopamine. I was constantly scraping this well for a real, authentic connection to this camera. Without replenishing that, there is eventually a cost. It was only much more complicated, well, because the character was named Steve. 

Stephanie: Right. RIGHT! Oh my God. You can’t separate the two. Of course you can’t. 

Steve: There’s this problem created by Fred Rogers. He established a convention wherein if you shared the name of the host of the character you’re playing on television you are that man. And uh, Blue’s Clues was very much based on Fred Rogers. Deliberately. It was an homage. And so people kind of assumed I was this dude. And I’m like, I’m not that dude. I showed up to this audition with long hair, and a fugazi shirt, and a pack of American Spirits in my back pocket. I’m not this guy. And that created this identity tension which eventually became crisis because the internet decided that I died. And I became this urban legend. Millions of people decided that I died and all agreed with each other on the internet. That went on long enough that when coupled with untreated clinical depression…it started to feel true. 

Stephanie: Did you feel any sense of, you know, I need to correct this immediately. This is so unfair. This is so uncomfortable? Or were you like, well, I guess this is happening now. 

Steve: I did what you could do. I went on Rosie O’Donnel and danced. I did print interviews and radio interviews. And all the press that I could. And we were still making episodes. And yet people were like, no that dude died. I would get in arguments with people on the street about it. That;s very much what the show is about.

Stephanie: I’m sure there’s a lot of big feelings there. What’s the process of the show like?

Steve: Well, I’m in a much different place than I was fifteen or twenty years ago. Actually, I don’t think I would have written the show if it weren’t for the viral video I made several years ago where I just said, you know, yo what’s up? The reconnecting..the continuation showed me that what I was working so hard on all those years ago was real. I got through. It was healing for me to be honest. I have a good friend, my oldest friend, happens to be an award winning genius playwright. He’s had a front row seat for a lot of the near collapses and reconstructions of my little narrative. He’s the one who said you should write this down. There’s something here. We put this thing together in like a week. We put it up in Beacon, NY for shits and giggles and the reaction was pretty strong. 

Stephanie: What was it like? What kind of people showed up? Tell me all about it. 

Steve: Well, we made it very clear that this isn’t a children’s show. It’s not. At all. We didn’t really advertise it because I didn’t know how to. I didn’t want people showing up with an expectation that I wasn’t going to deliver. I didn’t want people thinking I was going to show up and sing the mail song and jump into a picture frame. It’s not a nostalgia trip. It’s more of a deep dive into the nature of reality as it relates to technology, media really. It’s more about what is real and presence and how we create presence. It’s also about my eventual understanding that I needed to do in my real life which is what I did in my TV life everyday – stare into a void and ask, will you help me? It really wasn’t until I did that that my life meaningfully changed. 

Stephanie: I’m sure you meet so many Millenials who were fans of the show. Do you find that that’s what people are doing, but on their phones? Staring into a void and looking for help, validation. and connection?

Steve: I think they are, but I don’t think it’s there unless there is the last part which is connection. And I think that’s kind of the modern struggle. Not what is social media fire-hosing at us, but what do we bring to it? How do we show up for it?

Stephanie: I had a question about – has tenderness become easier or harder for you as you get older?

Steve: It’s become so much easier. That is one of the many gifts that I received from Steve. I’ve resisted that character for so long, but he has become one of the great teachers of my life. 

Stephanie: Did it ever drive you crazy only having cartoon co-stars? Like, alright, let’s talk to fake Blue over here and, you know, what’s Mr. fucking Pepper got going on.

Steve: Oh, for sure it was like Groundhog Day. But those moments where I would run around and run around and then stop and look at the camera and make that connection to the viewer. Those were always my favorite parts. 

Stephanie: What would you say is one of the bravest decisions you’ve made in your career?

Steve: Professionally, I think you know, taking a real stab at being a musician. That took balls. In my life, I think opening back up to Blue’s Clues. Putting my arm around Steve instead of trying to drown him somewhere. Maybe leaving New York City, because there were no guarantees up here.

Stephanie: What do you hope people remember you for? Like, in a personal way. It doesn’t have to be something huge.

Steve: He was kind to other people. He was simple and humble and of service in some way. 

Stephanie: If you could give the world one piece of unsolicited advice, if you could just go for it, what would it be?

Steve: I hate giving advice. I hate the concept of here’s what you should do. But, uhm, you were born with a superpower. And that is your childlike sense of wonder. Find it. Bring it to work. Bring it to worry. Bring it with you everywhere. Wonder is how you learned anything at all. You didn’t learn to wonder. You wondered to learn. That’s the truth.