Stranger Things star Noah Schnapp opens up about coming out as gay

Stranger Things star Noah Schnapp has opened up about “crying” following the reaction to revealing that he is gay earlier this year.

The 18-year-old actor, who rose to fame on the hit Netflix science fiction series as Will Byers, came out in a video posted to his TikTok account in January.

Schnapp told Variety on Monday that he was initially resistant to look at the social media response, but then he saw he received “a thousand texts of hearts and congratulations and rainbow flags”.

Schnapp said: “I was crying. I was like, ‘I made it. I’m done. I don’t have to worry’.”

He recalled his family’s response to finding out the news along with the Stranger Things team.

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

“I couldn’t tell (my mother) how I was feeling without telling her what the problem was, so just one night at dinner, I was like, ‘This is it’. She was like, ‘Finally, you told me’.”

Schnapp also told fellow Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown and the series executive producer Shawn Levy.

He said Brown, 19, reacted saying: “Oh, Schnapper! You told me finally.”

“It was truly such a liberating feeling, just seeing my parents cheer me on,” Schnapp added.

“I’ve never felt so supported and loved.”

Following the Stranger Things season four finale, Schnapp told the publication that his character Will was gay prior to coming out.

“I guess I’m more similar to Will than I thought,” the actor captioned his TikTok video this year.

He also wrote: “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’.”

Ross Duffer, co-creator of Stranger Things, said that Will is going to “hopefully tie the whole series together” and “part of his journey, it’s not just sexuality – it’s Will coming into his own as a young man”.

In June, Schnapp said on Instagram that he attended his first Pride event in New York, US.

Stranger Things will return for a fifth and final season with Terminator star Linda Hamilton joining the cast.

Across four seasons, set in the 1980s, the residents of fictional town Hawkins, Indiana, have had to fight off the dark forces from an alternate dimension.

Beetlejuice actress Winona Ryder, Hellboy star David Harbour and Finn Wolfhard have also starred in the show.