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There’s nothing like hitting the swimming pool on a muggy summer day. Chlorine and SPF wafting into your nostrils. Children crying because they’re too scared to follow their older siblings who urge them down the three-foot-long slide. The dinging of a concession stand cash register with every Mountain Dew or hot dog purchase. A magical experience in a grotesque, communal bathing type of way. Nothing quite jars this unique freedom like the screech of a lifeguard whistle, when your fast walk towards the diving board giddily transforms into a light jog. “No running!” they’ll yell, their steely eyes invisible behind opaque sunglasses. And nothing can make this embarrassment redden your cheeks all the more than Stranger Things star, Noah Schnapp, being that disciplinary lifeguard.
Schnapp is a good 17-year-old to have such a platform. He isn’t afraid to speak about what’s important to him, but he also doesn’t put on a facade while doing it. Following him on Instagram or TikTok feels like following your old friend. Sometimes, it seems like even he forgets how many people are watching him at any given moment. A perfect example being the time he joined co-star Millie Bobby Brown’s Instagram live and started venting to her about family drama. “Oh my god, Millie. My mom has been texting me, and she was like, ‘I’m so done with you, I’ve lost all my patience. I’m taking away your laptop and your phone,’” he says in a whisper on the live. Thousands of people watch as he spills to his best friend. It feels like a private call we shouldn’t be listening to. “Noah, we’re on live!” Brown exclaims immediately. “Oh, I forgot. Hi everyone,” he responds with a smile.
Having a casual relationship with his followers is a conscious thing for Schnapp. He wants his followers to feel comforted when they digitally interact with him. “I love to use my platform just to share very important ideas,” he says, “and just make people feel like they’re less alone in their struggles, and have someone to connect to, and relate to, and escape from, when they’re struggling with whatever they struggle with.” To create an even more intimate space for his followers, Schnapp has joined an app called Roll as an advisor. He describes the platform as “a non-explicit OnlyFans.” Roll is a breath of fresh air compared to Instagram, which he can find “inauthentic and fabricated.”
Schnapp finds his onscreen transition from childhood to young adulthood endearing, but he shares that the producers and directors of the series tried their hardest to keep Schnapp and his co-stars looking the age their characters were supposed to be. “It was the peak time of change, and puberty and growing up and just everything was changing with all of us, and the directors were just not loving it,” Schnapp recounts of filming an earlier season. “And I remember one of the producers coming up to me and telling me, ‘Noah, is there any way you could just speak in a higher tone and just slouch a little bit? Like, we need you to keep that season one innocence that you had.’ That was like, ‘I don’t know what to tell you. My voice is dropping. I don’t sound young anymore.’”
Noah Schnapp, Stranger Things, Flaunt Magazine, Issue 182, The Emotional Rescue Issue, Sandro, Dior, Pandora, Teddy Vonranson, Bode, Loewe, Que Shebley, Kidsuper, Etro, Converse, Alexander McQueen,
