Noah Schnapp has recalled journalists prying about his sexuality when he was a young teenager in a Time Magazine interview ahead of Netflix’s Stranger Things Season 5.
Schnapp was thrust into the spotlight at a young age when he was cast as Will Byers, who came out as gay in the sci-fi horror series in 2022. Rumours around Schnapp’s sexuality subsequently mounted, and he came out as gay publicly in January 2023 at 18 years old.
The now 21-year-old actor joined his Stranger Things co-stars – Finn Wolfhard, Caleb McLaughlin, Sadie Sink, Millie Bobby Brown and Gaten Matarazzo – for the cover of Time. During the interview, Schnapp noted that some of the questions directed to him as a young teen were inappropriate.
“When I was younger, I was obviously very scared of talking about it,” Schapp recalled.
“They would pry and ask me, ‘Is he gay? Are you gay?’ I was 12, 13. I didn’t know what to say.”
When Schnapp came out, he shared: “I guess I’m more similar to Will than I thought.”
He’s previously noted that Will allowed him to embrace his own sexuality, speaking to Variety in 2023.
“Once I did fully embrace that Will was gay, it was just an exponential speed towards accepting it for myself.
“I would be in a completely different place if I didn’t have Will to portray, and to embrace and help me accept myself.”
He continued: “I think if I never played that character, I probably would still be closeted.”
‘I didn’t know what to say’
He also furthered that Will’s sexuality had always been a topic there to explore.
“It was always kind of there, but you never really knew, is it just him growing up slower than his friends?” Schnapp continued.
“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.”
He also added: “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.”
Furthermore, Schnapp teased that Will’s “love” for Mike is something that may appear in the highly anticipated final season.
There have been some calls to boycott the upcoming season of Stranger Things as Schnapp has faced criticism for his comments about Israel. He was captured with stickers that read “Zionism is Sexy” in November 2023.
In January 2024, Schnapp posted a TikTok video addressing the controversy. “I feel like my thoughts and beliefs have been so far misconstrued from anything even close to what I believe,” he claimed in the now-deleted video.
Schnapp notes that he’s had “many open discussions with friends from Palestinian backgrounds,” which he thinks are “very important conversations” that have helped him “learn a lot.”
Stranger Things Season 5 will consist of eight episodes and is set to be released in three parts.
Volume one on November 26, Volume two on December 25 and the finale on December 31.
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