SIX months ago, I met Steve Burns at Nickelodeon. There were already clues that the 27-year-old “Blues Clues” star was uncomfortable in his green-striped rugby shirt.
There was that tattoo. The small yellow circle on his right arm was a smiley face without a smile. The mouth was flat. It spelled ambivalence in permanent ink. Burns was a Gen-X dork trying to be cool (he had mutilated his flesh), but incapable of being so.
Steve was clearly a young guy split between the character he created and the dude he wanted to become. Call it melodramatic, but Steve appeared to see his gentle, amiable creation as a kind of Frankenstein, a creature that had come to overshadow him until he no longer knew who he himself was.
He wanted to be bad. He wanted to play villains on “Law & Order.” Maybe he wanted to become the next Benjamin Bratt. He wanted to pick up chicks. Little did he know that teenage girls all over America were tuning in and turning on to the toddler show – and it wasn’t just because of the animation.
What was more revealing than our visit to the small man’s tiny toy-filled office high above Midtown with its mini-aquariums full of frogs, was Steve’s reaction to the profile that subsequently ran in The Post.
He went ballistic.
There were certain things in the positive but realistic piece that riled him. We mentioned his shortness. We mentioned his sharp nose. And, the coup de grace, his “painfully single vibe.”
Burns reacted with an Elton John hissy fit. He browbeat Nick publicists. He demanded I call him and apologize.
The writing was on the wall. Unlike Mr. Rogers, who neatly hung up his cardigan last month after 32 years, Burns, after five years, was preparing a diva’s farewell.
What else can explain his peculiar take-this-job-and-shove-it parting words. Burns dubbed the job “tedious” and claimed he would hate Steve if he was a kid. He told a reporter “I didn’t really want to become [“Simpsons” character] Krusty the Klown in front of the nation.”
Ouch! Spoken like someone who’s never had a real job.
Burns had another gripe: “Clues'” commercialization. “I was surprised to see the degree to which children’s television exists to sell toys to children,” he said. “When you have the attention of that many kids there’s a lot of good you can do that doesn’t involve the selling of products.
“But I always got upset when we got more press for the amount of toys that we have for sale as opposed to the educational value of the show.”
Very noble. But could he also have been peeved that with all those little voodoo dolls in his image, he didn’t get a substantial cut of the merchandising because he was a nobody when he came to the show and Nick holds the lion’s share of the rights?
Which takes us to the issue’s crux. Steve Burns was and is a nobody. It’s the fictional Steve, tattoo hidden beneath green stripes, who became the video playmate of so many children.
And now, a cranky 27-year-old Mr. Burns is about to embark on a new phase of his career, clueless to the lessons of many others who have slammed the door on good gigs. Remember McLean Stevenson?