Yes, Noah Schnapp is gay in real life. The actor, who rose to fame playing Will Byers in Stranger Things, publicly came out in January 2023 and has spoken openly about how his journey of self-acceptance was deeply intertwined with portraying his character on the show. For years, he faced intense public speculation about his sexuality, but once he embraced his truth, he found a new sense of confidence and freedom, moving forward with his life and career as an openly gay man.
The scrutiny began when Noah was just a child, facing questions from the press during media junkets for Stranger Things. He recalls that when he was only 12 or 13 years old, journalists would directly ask him, “Is he gay? Are you gay?” At that young age, he felt scared and uncertain about how to respond to such personal prying. This external pressure made him internalize his feelings further, causing him to, in his own words, “hold it down deeper” because the issue was “being poked and prodded out of me in such a public way.” Despite having a supportive family and friends, he struggled internally for years before he was ready to share his truth with the world.
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The Path to Public Self-Acceptance
Noah Schnapp officially came out to the public in a characteristically low-key yet powerful way for his generation: through an eight-second TikTok video. In the video, he lip-synced to an audio clip that said, “You know what it never was? That serious,” while text over the video revealed his personal announcement: “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 he chose for the video perfectly connected his real-life experience to his on-screen role, as he wrote, “I guess I’m more similar to Will than I thought.”
A pivotal factor in Noah’s journey was his experience playing Will Byers, whose own storyline of discovering his sexuality became central to the show. For a long time, even as he acted out Will’s struggles, Noah consciously distanced himself from connecting with that part of the character. However, everything began to change after he confirmed in a July 2022 interview with Variety that Will was indeed gay. Seeing the overwhelmingly positive reception from fans and the press was a revelation for him.
Noah Schnapp on coming out to Millie Bobby Brown:
“I kept trying to do it in person with her, and it was too hard. 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!” pic.twitter.com/eqI3kSg4wn
— Pop Base (@PopBase) August 7, 2023
He explained, “Once I did fully embrace that Will was gay, it was just an exponential speed towards accepting it for myself.” He has even stated that without the experience of playing Will and embracing the character’s identity, he believes he “probably would still be closeted.”
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Life After Coming Out
Since publicly coming out, Noah Schnapp has continued his studies and his acting career. As of late 2025, he is not publicly dating anyone and has kept his love life private. Looking ahead, he has expressed that he will be “picky” about taking on future LGBTQ+ roles, not out of avoidance, but because the topic is so personal to him. He wants any such project to “really resonate and mean something, and not just be another one for whatever diversity points.”
His story is a testament to the power of representation, showing how a fictional character can profoundly help someone write their own real-life story and find the courage to live authentically.
