Noah Schnapp, the actor who plays Will Byers in Stranger Things, has officially come out as gay.
Schnapp took to TikTok to share the news with the world, confirming that he recently told his family and friends and that he was “more similar to Will than I thought.”
“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,'” the caption accompanying the TikTok reads.
As for the video itself, which you can view here, Schnapp is lip-syncing to an audio clip of someone else saying, “you know what it never was? That serious. It was never that serious. Quite frankly, will never be that serious.”
Around the release of Stranger Things Season 4 in 2022, Schnapp confirmed that Will was gay and that the hints were there even in the first season.
“It was hinted at in Season 1. 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 he is gay and does love Mike,” Schnapp said.
While there was a scene in Stranger Things’ third season that came the closest to confirming Will’s sexuality, Season 4 featured a very emotional scene that was wonderfully acted by Schnapp that saw him explaining to Mike Eleven’s feelings, which also happened to mirror his own.
After his speech, Will turns away and cries quietly, and Schnapp shared that a ton of people have come up to him to thank him for his work in bringing that scene and this character to life.
“People have come up to me [and said,] ‘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.”
For more on Stranger Things, be sure to check out our review of Season 4, what the title of the first episode of Season 5 is, and how this upcoming season will be a thematic culmination of everything that came before.
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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.
