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For millions of Stranger Things fans around the world, the realization that Will Byers had feelings for his best friend Mike Wheeler wasn’t shocking, it was welcomed. The same can be said of the Noah Schnapp, who plays the beloved character on the hit Netflix show and his own coming out journey. In a new interview with Variety, Noah shares intimate details about his coming out story, including how playing the closeted character on Stranger Things actually helped him come to terms with his own sexuality.
“Once I did fully embrace that Will was gay, it was just an exponential speed towards accepting it for myself,” Noah explained in his cover story for Variety’s Young Hollywood edition. “I think if I never played that character, I probably would still be closeted.”
Noah initially shared the news via a Jan. 5 TikTok that addressed the information in a fairly nonchalant way. “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’,” he wrote over video of himself lying in bed and mouthing the words to a sound that says, “You know what it never was? That serious. It was never that serious. Quite frankly would never be that serious.”
In the interview with Variety, by the time he posted the video, those closest to him already knew the truth directly from him, including his twin sister, his mother, and his best friend and Stranger Things co-star, Millie Bobby Brown. “I kept trying to do it in person with her, and it was too hard. So thenI just FaceTimed her one day in the middle of a Party City and I was like, ‘Millie, I’m gay.’ And she was like, ‘Oh, Schnapper! You told me finally!’”
Then the flood gates were open, and a month later, when the whole world knew, so did his entire Stranger Things family. “I love how he did it, which was like not making a deal out of it,” says co-creator Matt Duffer told Variety. “I mean, it was a powerful statement, but the simplicity of it — that is so Noah. We’re really proud of him.”
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