Steve Burns is solving the puzzle behind his departure from Blue's Clues.
The former host finally explained why he abruptly left the Nickelodeon show in 2002, when viewers were told that his character was heading off to college. Though fans raised their own speculations, Steve set the record straight by saying the decision came down to age.
He told Variety that it was simply his time. He was almost 30 years old and didn't want to wear a wig on TV as he had begun to lose hair.
Walking away from Blue's Clues afterward prompted Steve to reflect on his time filming the kid's show.
"I didn't know it yet, but I was the happiest depressed person in North America," he said in the interview published Nov. 16. "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."
"I was always able to dig and find something that felt authentic to me that was good enough to be on the show," Steve continued, "but after years and years of going to the well without replenishing it, there was a cost."
Steve noted that while on the show, his approach toward taking care of his mental health was to push through it.
"My strategy had been: ‘Hey, you got a great thing going, so just fight it!' Turns out, you don't fight depression; you collect it," he said. "After I left Blue's Clues, there was a long period of healing."
The actor noted that a big turning point in his life occurred when his father died in 2015 after a battle with cancer.
"I care for him while he was dying of cancer, and it changed me," Steve explained. "It made me think about things I hadn't thought about, like legacy and the value of the things we've left behind. It forced me to reevaluated and take much more seriously my mental health."
Now, he is stepping back into Blue's Clues for movie Blue's Big City Adventure, out Nov. 18 on Paramount+.
"I've never enjoyed being Steve more than I do now," he said. "I get to wear a trenchcoat. It's like Grover-meets-Columbo—a clown character. That's really freeing somehow."