Steve Burns Didn't Think 'Blue's Clues' Would Work Because It Was 'Too Strange'

Steve Burns didn't think "Blue's Clues" would take off the way it did when he first started filming the Nickelodeon children's show in 1996. Not only did the show work, but it has spanned 26 years, three hosts, the reboot "Blue's Clues & You," and a feature film where all three hosts of the show reunite on the big screen.

Burns, 49, told PEOPLE that he thought maybe the show was "simply too strange and too breakthrough" to work. He also didn't think that kids watching the show would "talk back to the TV screen." "These are all the things that I liked about it, but I didn't think that they would work," he said. "I doubted it. I was skeptical that they would work. I liked that it was kind of the Rocky Horror Children's Show."

After shooting the pilot, Burns thought, "That was deeply weird television." But once it aired, his tune changed. "Then it aired, and it became immediately No. 1, and it had this global reach and everything," he said. "It always felt like a very small and personal experience to me."  Perhaps part of that feeling was because of the way the show was filmed. "It was me and a camera. And in my mind, it was me and a conversation with one other human being," he explained. "So it always felt very small to me."

After Burns left the hit show, Donovan Patton took over as Joe, Steve's cousin. Josh Dela Cruz took over the Thinking Chair in the 2019 reboot. All three are friends in real life and have continued to work with the franchise. Joe works at the local Present Store and Steve runs a detective agency on the show. Burns also writes, produces and directs the reboot.

During a recent interview with Vanity Fair, the three hosts of the hit show talked about their friendship and working on the show. "We're cousins on the show, and in real life, it does feel like a family reunion whenever we do get to get together," Dela Cruz said. "Because most of the time, I'm in Toronto, Donovan is in LA, and Steve's in New York."

The first time the three hosts got together was when Dela Cruz filmed his first episode of the reboot. "The day when we were doing Josh's first episode of the reboot, Donovan and I were on set because we did a little cameo. We were like, we have to be professional. We have to support Josh; he's probably nervous. That lasted 15 seconds. We were the worst, just giggling and stalling and it was terrible. It's not a great thing for us to be left unsupervised," Burns said. Dela Cruz added, "I remember that day because I was nervous. What you did was remind me that oh, it's all play."

The three friends got the chance to work together on the franchise's first feature film, "Blue's Big City Adventure" that was released on Paramount+ last month. When asked how that differed from the usual green screen experience, Patton said, "It was an embarrassment of fun." "I'm a little upset because in my final shot of the whole movie, I threw myself upon the ground in Central Park. I did a dive roll nobody asked me to do," he reminisces. "I don't even think the camera was even on me. One of those things that put my spine at risk, and no one was even looking. There's a lesson in that."

When the show turned 25 in 2021, the three friends celebrated the blue puppy together, and many fans hopped into the comment section of Burns' Instagram post to share their memories of the show. "Blue's Clues was my favorite show when I was 3???," one fan wrote. Another added, "I remember watching Blue's Clues literally every single day when I was little and it was hands down best show ever and I’m 16 now and I saw a reel and I got that childhood nostalgia."