American actor Noah Schnapp, who plays the closeted Gay teenager role on Netflix’s Stranger Things come out as gay.
In a video posted to his TikTok account on Thursday, the 18-year-old actor wrote, “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’” — over Schnapp lip-syncing to an audio clip from a different TikTok 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.” In July, following the debut of the final two episodes of the fourth season of “Stranger Things,” Schnapp confirmed to Variety for the first time that Will Byers is gay and in love with his best friend Mike (Finn Wolfhard).
Schnapp’s comment section was filled with congratulatory messages, including one from TikToker Chris Olsen, who wrote, “Welcome king.” “He said method acting,” joked one TikTok user in a comment. “I’m so proud of you!” wrote a third commenter.
Earlier in Stranger Things‘ history, Schnapp declined to reveal his character’s sexuality, saying “I find that people do reach to put a label on him and just want to know, so badly… He’s just confused and growing up. And that’s what it is to be a kid,” he previously told Variety.
But over the summer, he confirmed in an interview that Will had been wrestling with being gay, similar to how he was in his personal life.
“Now that he’s gotten older, they made it a very real, obvious thing,” he said over the summer. “Now it’s 100% 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.”
Netflix and the Duffers have announced that Season 5 of Stranger Things will conclude the show, but there is no confirmation yet when production will begin on the season, let alone when it would debut.
