Hosting ‘Blue’s Clues’ Earned Steve Burns Surprisingly Little Pay

Blue’s Clues vaulted Steve Burns to TV stardom… but didn’t give him typical TV-star pay. In a new interview, Burns said he had a “grim” standard of living while hosting the Nickelodeon children’s show.

“I got Blue’s Clues early, but every waiter I ever knew made more money than I did for the first many seasons of that show,” Burns told Rainn Wilson in the May 1 episode of Wilson’s Soul Boom podcast.

In fact, Blue’s Clues was Burns’ “side hustle forever,” since his real gig was doing voiceovers for commercials. And that voiceover work “kind of sustained” Burns as he lived in a hallway in a New York City apartment.

“But man, it was grim for a long time,” he added.

On Blue’s Clues, Burns played Steve, the on-air human who invites viewers to help him decipher clues left for them by a blue, animated dog.

Burns also recalled his audition for the show, saying he went in knowing Blue’s Clues was a children’s show but thinking it would be another voiceover gig. “If I had known that it was to be the guy on the show, I wouldn’t have gone, not only because I was a pretentious young man at the time — that was part of it — but also because children’s television had never occurred to me,” he said. “I didn’t even know any kids, you know? And I just [thought], there’s no way I can do that. I would have said ‘No, no, that’s a mistake.’”

But Burns, who had previously gotten commendations from famed acting teacher Uta Hagen, went for it anyway. “I thought, ‘Oh, s***. I better do something.’” he told Wilson. “And so I looked at the script, and, you know, 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 as the on-screen host after his departure. These days, Josh Dela Cruz presents Nickelodeon’s ongoing revival, Blue’s Clues & You!, with Burns making the occasional appearance.