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 ding 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 one of the most famous teenagers in the world. He’s been in the public eye since he was 11, commencing with the release of Netflix’s wildly popular Stranger Things—a 1980s sci-fi drama series about a ragtag group investigating anomalies in their hometown. More than 25 million people follow him on Instagram. So, why is the seemingly improbable image of him donning a red swimsuit and sternly telling you to walk when you’re within 10 feet of the pool actually very probable? When he’s not attending premieres to promote the fourth season of Stranger Things, or chatting with Jimmy Fallon about what a wild ride it was like to film this time around, he’s spending this summer working as a lifeguard.

“It’s kind of a ‘just for fun thing,’” he laughs about his temporary gig. Obviously, Schnapp doesn’t need a summer job, but he wants one. Although the fourth season of Stranger Things just became the second Netflix show to hit one billion hours viewed, making him more notable than ever, Schnapp likes to live like any other person his age. “I’ve kind of grown up with a normal life and normal friends and stuff outside of Stranger Things, so it’s kind of kept me grounded,” he adds.

A few months ago, Schnapp graduated high school. College was the obvious next step. In a heartwarming video posted online, Schnapp’s parents and twin sister stand behind him as he waits to find out if he’s been accepted into one of his dream schools. After a few clicks and what probably felt like an eternity, he and his family jump up with excitement and tears in their eyes. The elation overwhelms them and instead of immediately hugging, they sort of just bounce off one another. His father stares at the computer screen, soaking in the words for himself. Congratulations, you have been accepted. He smiles from ear to ear as he realizes his son will attend one of the highest-ranked universities on the globe—The University of Pennsylvania. Like the other incoming freshmen, he will share a dorm. He’ll eat questionable dining hall food, have to wear shoes in the shared showers, and stay up late stressing over exams.

“I was thinking of going for acting,” Schnapp shares. And yet while attending university may have been a no-brainer, deciding on his major wasn’t. Instead of pursuing a drama or film degree, he’ll attend the private Ivy League’s business school. “Acting was just kind of repetitive, and I wanted to try something new,” he says. “Millie [Bobby Brown] is doing the same thing with her schooling—she’s kind of learning about other things. I thought it would make more sense to do something different. And business was a pretty clear next thing for me.”

Classes haven’t started yet, but Schnapp’s already got the ball rolling on entrepreneurial endeavors. His snack brand, TBH, promises a delicious chocolate hazelnut spread that doesn’t use palm oil—a major driver of deforestation. “When I knew better, I wanted to do better,” he remarks in a video on TBH’s website. As soon as he found out how damaging palm oil was on the planet, he knew he wanted to create a product with better, more eco-friendly ingredients. “I want to leverage my voice and use it to make a change on this Earth.” With such a large platform and influence on the younger generation, sustainability is something Schnapp wants to practice in all of his business ventures. “It’s always been a passion of mine—health, and the planet, and being environmentally conscious. It’s always been something I’ve cared about.”

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’s ability to form personal, wide-reaching connections goes beyond his social media accounts. It’s what makes his Stranger Things character, Will Byers, feel so real. Will has an extremely unfortunate life. Season after season, the kid gets taunted and threatened by supernatural monsters, all while trying to navigate puberty and growing up. Although Schnapp can’t relate to being possessed by a creature living in an underground world, he can relate to the awkwardness of being a preteen. Most people cringe at every photo of them from middle school. They try to pretend that era of their lives never happened because, as it turns out, dying your hair with a packet of black cherry Kool-Aid and wearing wire-frame glasses isn’t exactly timeless. Instead of becoming physically repulsed when seeing a photo of himself from those awkward years, Schnapp loves that those chapters of his life are forever preserved. “It’s just crazy,” he exclaims, “because I get to watch not only this character, but myself grow up onscreen. Now I’ll be able to always have this archive of me as a 10-year-old actor, and me now, and I’ll be able to show that to my kids, and it’s just crazy that that’ll live there forever.”

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.’”

Indeed, Schnapp’s character isn’t the little skittish preteen he was during the pilot season. Back then, Will was trapped in the Upside Down, the underworld below his midwestern town, riddled with supernatural creatures. Monsters were preying on him. One wrong step and he would’ve been brutally killed and never found by his loved ones. But things are even worse in the newest season. Will has to come to terms with his identity—he must reflect on himself. Truly an unimaginable obstacle to overcome without the help of a therapist, especially for an awkward high school freshman in the 1980s.

As mentioned, when Schnapp first started playing Will, the two were the same age. But real-world time has moved quicker than the show’s timeline, and in the newest season, Will is just starting high school, while we know the exciting next stage that Schnapp is preparing for in the real world. Jumping back a few years, he shares, and dealing with more real-world issues, pushed him as an artist. “It was super fun for me this season,” he recalls. “Very different for me than what I’m used to, just because it’s always been more of the super-natural struggles, and dealing with the Upside Down, and the monster, and this season was just a very real kind of season for Will. Exploring his personal issues, and struggling with his identity, and finding himself and kind of growing up.”

Schnapp also finds fun in playing a character so different from himself. Schnapp is an outgoing, wide-eyed, soon-to-be adult. He doesn’t seem to be afraid to be himself. A viral video of him doing a random dance with his friends, or complaining that his Ratatouille rental expired before he had the chance to watch it, is always trending. Will, on the other hand, struggles to be his most authentic self. He doesn’t let his true emotions escape. Instead, they are imprisoned within the walls of his brain, only seeing the light of day when he can disguise them as someone else’s feelings and thoughts. While some actors go the method acting route to become characters so different from themselves, Schnapp can just flip a switch and be Will. “I like to snap in and out of it in like two seconds,” he recounts. “Will is so separate from me, and just so different for me, which is so fun to play on set. And I love that challenge of putting myself in a completely different set of shoes.”

It has been announced that season five of Stranger Things will be the final season. It’s an emotional reality for Schnapp. It is sad to retire a character who has been such a large part of his life, but the legacy the series has created won’t die when the final season is released. “Will is like my baby,” he says. “I’ve curated and built this character for years, and it’s very crazy to think that it will be over, before I knew it and that’s it. But, it’s such a big franchise that it’s never really going to be over. There will always be spin-offs and things to come. I don’t know, I’ll do movies with Millie and whatnot in the future. There’s always more to look forward to.”

It can be bittersweet reflecting on how it all started when such a formative part of your life suddenly comes to a close. Schnapp remembers wrapping the first season and not thinking anything would come of it. “I’m so grateful that the show has become what it is. I mean, I remember when I first started. All of us wrapped the season, and we’re like, ‘Okay, never see you again, this is going nowhere. And then a week later, I gained like 10,000 followers and got verified, and I thought it was the craziest thing ever. And it’s just like, now look, it’s 24 million followers. It’s just...it’s crazy. But it all happened so fast. I will definitely be sad for it to be over.”

To Schnapp, it may have been uncertain whether or not Stranger Things was going to be received well by audiences. But to the rest of the world? It’s a stylized show set in the 1980s that stars Winona Ryder—what more could you want? And Schnapp is the perfect Will Byers—son of Ryder’s character, Joyce Byers. It’s hard to imagine anyone else filling the role. But, Schnapp shares, just months before he landed the role of Will, he was about to throw in the towel and give up on his acting dreams. “I almost didn’t audition for it,” he recalls. “It was also a point in my acting career when I was younger, and I was just kind of getting fed up, because I was doing so many auditions and I wasn’t getting anything. And it was just thinking like, ‘Okay, maybe I’ll just do something else and go play baseball or something like that. Maybe this isn’t working out for me.’ And then my parents were like, ‘Just give it a few more shots.’ And this was one of those few more shots and it turned into the launch of my career. So it is very crazy.”

The MLB might not have it in for Schnapp, but the world of acting continues to embrace him. In addition to Stranger Things, Schnapp’s newest film, The Tutor, a mystery/thriller about a tutor’s obsession with his student, is in post-production. In between college semesters and holiday breaks, he’ll attend the premieres of his latest films. And in between schooling and premieres, his business ventures will continue to thrive. Schnapp has a lot on his plate, but right now, this summer, he’s focused on the present—so you sure as hell better remember to walk, not run, if you’re planning to frequent his local pool. 

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Photographed by Isaac Anthony. 

Styled by John Tan. 

Written by Audra McClain.

Groomer: Lisa Raquel at See Management. 

Prop Stylist: Elaine Winter. 

Photo Assistant: Isaac Schell. 

Flaunt Film: Renee Nabinger. 

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