
Noah Schnapp plays the closeted gay teenager Will Byers on Netflix’s Stranger Things…
In a video posted to his TikTok account yesterday, the 18-year-old actor wrote, as he lip-synced 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.”
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’”
In the caption 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 told Variety that Will Byers was gay and in love with his best friend Mike…
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. Now it’s 100% clear that he is gay and he does love Mike.”
Will’s sexuality had been an open question since the first episode, but Schnapp had always deflected questions about the character’s identity, saying that the character was still
up to the audience’s participation.”
Schnapp said that he wasn’t entirely sure what creators Matt and Ross Duffer had in mind for Will, but once he did, he didn’t want to spoil it.
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.”
Netflix and the Duffers have announced that Season 5 will be its last, but no confirmation so far as to when production will begin or when it will debut.
ConDRAGulations, Noah!
@noahschnapp I guess I’m more similar to will than I thought
♬ original sound – princessazula0
(Photos, Netflix, screen grab; via Variety)