Noah Schnapp says that playing Will Byers helped him come out faster

Making inferences about an actor’s sexuality based on the character they play (or for any reason) is generally a very bad idea—just ask Heartstopper’s Kit Connor, who was forced out of the closet in response to queerbaiting allegations last year. Still, at least one actor has benefited immeasurably from the opportunity to first test the waters through a fictionalized version of himself: Stranger Things’ Noah Schnapp, who came out to the world in a TikTok video captioned “I guess I’m more similar to will than I thought” earlier this year.

While Stranger Things’ creators Matt and Ross Duffer had always conceived of Will—whose cold open disappearance drives the entirety of season 1—as a “kid struggling with his sexual identity” (per Variety), this aspect of the character was not officially confirmed until Schnapp himself admitted that “it’s pretty clear this season that Will has feelings for Mike” in an interview with Variety last summer.

The process of bringing Will out of the closet made everything feel a little safer for Schnapp—who had never spoken of his sexuality to anyone—to make the same change in his own life. “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,” he told Variety in a pre-strike interview. (Previously, fan questions about his sexuality “made me hold it down deeper… because it was kind of being poked and prodded out of me in such a public way.”)

“Once I did fully embrace that Will was gay, it was just an exponential speed towards accepting it for myself,” the actor continued. “I would be in a completely different place if I didn’t have Will to portray, and to embrace and help me accept myself. I think if I never played that character, I probably would still be closeted.”

Before and after posting his TikTok, Schnapp received a massive outpouring of support from friends (like Millie Bobby Brown, who he came out to on a FaceTime call in a Party City), family, the Stranger Things crew (like executive producer and director Shawn Levy who got emotional about the fact that the job helped “actualize” the young actor: “that may be one of the most beautiful outcomes of Stranger Things that I’ve heard”), and even a few—or more than a few—“big names” that slid into his DMs.

The actor also hinted that his own process of self-discovery is allowing him to give back to the character who gave him so much in the Netflix show’s final season: “I think the way I act in Season 5, honestly, might be a little different. I will be fully aware of who I am. Knowing all of that about myself and being able to invest that in my character, I’m honestly just excited.”