Noah Schnapp came out as gay in a TikTok video shared on Thursday (5 January).
Schnapp plays Will Byers in Netflix’s hit series Stranger Things – a character who the actor confirmed was “100 per cent” gay after season four aired.
On TikTok, Schnapp shared a clip of himself with the caption, “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’” while lip-syncing to an audio clip of someone saying, “You know what it never was? That serious. It was never that serious. Quite frankly, will never be that serious.”
In the caption to his TikTok video, Schnapp wrote, “I guess I’m more similar to Will than I thought.”
Schnapp confirmed Will’s sexuality in a June 2022 interview with Variety.
“Obviously, it was hinted at in season one: It was always kind of there, but you never really knew, is it just him growing up slower than his friends?” he said.
“Now that he’s gotten older, they made it a very real, obvious thing. Now it’s 100 per cent clear that he is gay and he does love Mike. 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.”
Schnapp added that the fan response to Will’s story has been positive, saying: “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.”
Schnapp also expressed his hope that Will’s sexuality would be addressed openly in the show’s next season. “There’s so many different things they have to address. Obviously, we hope for a coming-out scene,” he said.
