‘Stranger Things’ Star Noah Schnapp on Coming Out to His Sister: ‘Hated the Idea of Marrying Another Girl’

Actor Noah Schnapp, who plays Will Byers on the hit Netflix series Stranger Things, elaborated on his coming out gay earlier this year, adding that his sister welcomed the idea of not having to compete with another woman for his attention.

Speaking with Variety, Schnapp said that his sister “hated” the idea of him actually marrying another girl.

“I can’t tell anyone else before I tell my own twin sister — she’ll kill me,” Schnapp recalled thinking to himself. “I was driving, and I just kept putting it off. Our house was right down the road, and she was like, ‘Why do you keep making these wrong turns?’ I was like, ‘I can’t do it, I can’t do it.’ Then we got home, and I was like, ‘Screw it.’”

“She was ecstatic,” he added. “She said that she would’ve hated the idea of me marrying another girl and having to compete with that girl for my attention. The fact that now it’ll be a guy, she was like, ‘Oh, he’ll be my best friend.’”

Schnapp said he fell back into the closet when he went off to college.

“Being fully aware of it and just completely, blatantly hiding it, it was really hard,” Schnapp said. “It just made everything miserable for those months.”

Schnapp recalled not being able to open with his mother when she visited him.

“I couldn’t tell her how I was feeling without telling her what the problem was, so just one night at dinner, I was like, ‘This is it,’” he said. “She was like, ‘Finally, you told me!’ She said that she would talk to her friend when I was 12 and be like, ‘I know my son is gay. Do I have to ask him? How do I do it?’ The friend was like, ‘Oh, you just let him be and let him figure it out himself.’”

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When coming out over the summer, Schnapp, 18 at the time, said that he had been in the closet for 18 years, implying he had been gay since a baby.

“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 said.

Paul Roland Bois joined Breitbart News in 2021. He also directed the award-winning feature film, EXEMPLUM, which can be viewed for FREE on YouTube or Tubi. A high-quality, ad-free stream can also be purchased on Google Play or Vimeo on Demand. Follow him on Twitter @prolandfilms or Instagram @prolandfilms.