‘Stranger Things’ star Noah Schnapp comes out as gay: ‘Guess I’m more similar to Will than I thought’ – Yahoo Entertainment
Actor Noah Schnapp officially came out as gay on TikTok Thursday.
“Guess I’m more similar to Will than I thought,” he wrote in the caption, referring to his Stranger Things character, Will Byers, whose own sexuality had been a source of fan speculation until this past year. “When I finally told my friends and family I was gay after being scared in the closet for 18 years and all they said was ‘we know,'” Schnapp added in the text above the video.
The post — which has since gone viral with 9 million likes and more than 500,000 shares — utilizes a sound created by TikTok user princessazual0, which goes as follows: “You know what it never was? That serious. It was never that serious. Quite frankly, it will never be that serious.”
Following the release of the penultimate season of Stranger Things this past summer, Schnapp confirmed that Will is indeed gay and has romantic feelings for his best friend, Mike Wheeler (played by Finn Wolfhard).
“Obviously, it was hinted at in Season 1: It was always kind of there, but you never really knew, is it just him growing up slower than his friends? Now that he’s gotten older, they made it a very real, obvious thing,” the actor explained during an interview with Variety.
He continued: “But before, it was a slow arc. I think it is done so beautifully, because it’s so easy to make a character just like all of a sudden be gay. People have come up to me — I was just in Paris and this, like, 40-year-old man came up to me and he was like, ‘Wow, this Will character made me feel so good. And I related to it so much. That is exactly who I was when I was a kid.’ That just made me so happy to hear. They are writing this real character and this real journey and real struggle and they’re doing it so well.”
Seasons 1-4 of Stranger Things are now streaming on Netflix. The show will conclude after a confirmed fifth season, which is currently ramping up its production.
Looking for more sci-fi TV? Check out shows like Resident Alien, Brave New World, Project Blue Book, Eureka, Heroes, Intergalactic, and more streaming now on Peacock. Looking ahead, SYFY has the new series — The Ark — from original Stargate film producer Dean Devlin, as well as Stargate SG-1 producer Jonathan Glassner.
