“I think I’m more like Will than I thought,” the teen actor said of his character in the sci-fi series.
Stranger things star Noah Schnapp has come out as gay.
Schnapp, who plays (confirmed) incarcerated teen Will Byers on Netflix’s sci-fi series, took TikTok Thursday night to joke about his friends and family’s unsurprising reaction to his sexuality, captioning the video “I think I’m more like Will than I thought.”
Although the actor, 18, writes in the on-screen text that he spent his life fearing coming out to friends and family, they already knew, and it didn’t matter. Actually, it had never been a big problem.
“You know what it never was? So serious. It was never that serious,” Schnapp syncs with a trending audio. “Frankly, it will never be that serious.”
Fans filled Schnapp’s comments section with an outpouring of support for the star, and while the news may have come as a shock to some, others were about as surprised as the actor’s loved ones.
“The closet was glass, honey, but we’re glad you’re comfortable now,” one TikTok user joked in support.
Schnapp on playing a character in the closet: Will’s storyline was ‘so nicely done’
Although Will Byers’ sexuality has been a hot topic of discussion since the early seasons stranger things, it wasn’t until last year that Schnapp confirmed that his character was indeed gay – and in love with his best friend, Mike (Finn Wolfhard).
“…It was alluded to in Season 1: It was always there, but you never really knew, did he just grow up slower than his friends? Now that he’s gotten older, they have a very real, obvious lying thing. Now it’s 100% clear that he’s gay and that he loves Mike,” the actor said in July 2022. Until then, Schnapp would tactfully dodge any interview questions about Will’s sexuality, saying it’s up to the actor’s own interpretation viewers was..
But now that Will is officially out (at least to viewers), Schnapp says he’s more than happy with the slow-burning arc creators Matt and Ross Duffer have put together over the show’s four seasons.
“But before, it was a slow arc. I think it’s done so beautifully because it’s so easy to suddenly make a character gay,” added Schnapp.
Seasons 1-4 of Stranger things streaming now on Netflix.