Stranger Things star Noah Schnapp came out as gay earlier this year, but before he told the world, he shared the news with a number of people including Millie Bobby Brown.
In an interview with Variety, the 18-year-old actor behind the character Will Byers revealed he made a list of people he wanted to come out to in person, and Millie Bobby Brown was chief among them. "I kept trying to do it in person with her, and it was too hard,” said Schnapp. "So then I 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!’"
In January this year, Schnapp publicly came out as gay in a short video posted to TikTok. "I guess I'm more similar to Will than I thought," he wrote alongside a clip in which he lip-synced, "You know what it never was? That serious. It was never that serious. Quite frankly, will never be that serious.”
Elsewhere in the interview, he opened up about how the sexuality of his Stranger Things character helped him understand his own. “It kind of blew up in the press, and everyone was like, ‘Oh, Will’s gay! Hooray!’” said Schnapp, who confirmed Will Byers' sexuality in July last year. “I saw all these comments on Instagram and TikTok. There was not one bad thing about him being gay. I was like, if he has all this support, then why should I worry about anything?” When he started college last year, he said a lot of girls started hitting on him and it gave him one last push to come out. "I was like, ‘I don’t like this. I don’t want this,’” he continued. “I was like, ‘Holy shit. I know now.’”
The first person he told was his twin sister, Chloe, who he said was "ecstatic" to hear the news. He followed that up with his mother, who told him that she had thought he might be gay for quite some time but wanted him to figure it out on his own.
Stranger Things creators the Duffer Brothers also offered up another tease about Season 5 to Variety, because the sexuality of Will Byers will be integral to the final episode of the Netflix hit. “Will really takes center stage again in 5,” said Ross Duffer. “This emotional arc for him is what we feel is going to hopefully tie the whole series together. Will is used to being the young one, the introverted one, the one that’s being protected. So part of his journey, it’s not just sexuality — it’s Will coming into his own as a young man.”
The fifth and final season of Stranger Things was set to go into production this year, but it has been indefinitely delayed due to the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike.
