![]() Steve was 22 when the show premiered, having landed the gig after a fluke audition. This is Steve’s demeanor throughout all of the stories he tells me about “Blue’s Clues” - cheerful, funny, self-deprecating - but until recently, the internet would have had you believe he’d left it behind in a fit of fury. He always did everything wrong, just like me.” He can hardly keep from cracking up: “I was a befuddled man-child walking around that house, and Mr. “I shouldn’t have a favorite, but I just love the guy who played Mr. As he geeks out about the little details, I can’t help but feel like I’m sitting crisscross on the rug in front of the TV in my childhood home, where I used to watch his show all those years ago. And while his wardrobe these days features more than just multiples of the same green-striped shirt, his cabin is a treasure trove of “Blue’s Clues” paraphernalia, including the original Handy Dandy Notebook and Thinking Chair. He still sings songs to help himself remember things in fact, as I first step into his home, he makes up a song on the spot about the pronunciation of my name. He’s entranced by this time of year - more than once during our conversation, he tells me he wishes I’d visited two weeks earlier, when the changing leaves “looked like Fruity Pebbles.” Things are calm here, and that helps him feel emotionally available - to his friends, who regularly come to stay, and now to me.ĭespite the new routine Steve has found in the Catskills, he still resembles the Steve that the “Blue’s Clues” generation knew and loved. The meal Steve has made for us is emblematic of his life in the mountains, with vegetables sourced from small farms enjoying autumn harvest season. Whose birthday was yesterday, by the way.” My whole experience on this mountain feels connected to my dad. He put an offer on an empty plot nearby the next day. I won’t get into why, but butterflies had a special meaning between me and my father, so I went over to take a picture, and they Batman’d me” - Steve wiggles his fingers and makes a whooshing sound. There were 150 monarch butterflies drinking from a little puddle. I said, ‘Yeah, sure, Dad, whatever,’ and went back there. ![]() Go back behind this gas station.’ I’m very skeptical about this kind of experience, but it was the most casual, pragmatic, unspiritual vibe ever. And New York City never was much good for my mental health.”Ī year and a half after his father died, while on a camping trip, Steve stopped for gas in this town. It forced me to reevaluate and take much more seriously my mental health. “It made me think about things I hadn’t thought about, like legacy and the value of the things we’ve left behind. ![]() “I cared for him while he was dying of cancer, and it changed me,” Steve says as he grabs two cans of sparkling water from the fridge and sets one down in front of me. Steve jokes that his affinity for the wilderness might mean he hasn’t changed since his childhood in Pennsylvania, but it was a profoundly adult experience that brought him to this town: the death of his father in 2015, and the mourning period that followed. It’s like Grover-meets-Columbo - a clown character. “I’ve never enjoyed being Steve more than I do now,” Steve says. 18, unites Steve, Patton and new host Josh Dela Cruz. But Steve has recently resurfaced as an internet folk hero, and soon he’ll return to his beloved Blue in the movie “Blue’s Big City Adventure.” The film, which drops on Paramount+ on Nov. He held down the fort while Steve went off to college.įans speculated for years about what caused his disappearance, though the answer isn’t as scandalous as people imagined: He was pushing 30, and it was time. Then, in the middle of the show’s run, Steve mysteriously left the kids’ juggernaut, handing over the emceeing duties to another actor, Donovan Patton, who played Joe, Steve’s little brother. He signed off each episode with a catchy tune that ended, “With me and you and my dog, Blue, we can do anything that we wanna do.” ![]() As he decoded the prints - constantly asking the viewer for their help and pausing to hear their thoughts - Steve taught a generation of children about the ABCs, types of weather and how to recycle. from 1996 to 2006, featured him as the eager, ditzy, ageless, sexless best friend to an animated puppy who left him messages via paw prints around their house. “Blue’s Clues,” which ran on Nickelodeon’s Nick Jr. In the late ’90s and early aughts, Steve was a rock star to me and my toddler peers, as big as Fred Rogers (whom he idolizes) or Dora the Explorer (whom he’s less sure of). “My mother always said that as soon as she turned on a vacuum cleaner, I would be like, ‘Nope, I’m out,’ and go into the woods and build a fort.” “I grew up in the Pennsylvania version of this,” he continues, gesturing to the landscape of shedding trees and country roads surrounding us. ![]()
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