HELLO! India Exclusive: Growing up in the Upside Down with Millie Bobby Brown and Noah Schnapp

Some friendships are built in school corridors; others are shaped by spotlights, prosthetics, and 4am call times only a global phenomenon can demand. For Millie Bobby Brown and Noah Schnapp, the world that raised them wasn’t a childhood home or a classroom; it was Hawkins, Indiana. They were 11 and 10 when Netflix’s Stranger Things first began rolling in 2015. Now, nearly a decade later, they've found themselves at the helm of the show’s highly-anticipated final season as two young adults who didn’t just grow famous together; they grew up together on TV. It’s the kind of story television rarely produces anymore. It's easy to draw parallels to the Harry Potter cast, who transitioned from kids to stars within the walls of Hogwarts; or the Full House ensemble, who journeyed from young actors to household names. Millie and Noah belong to that rare lineage of stars whose friendship has matured under the world’s gaze.

HELLO! India exclusively speaks to Noah and Millie what it feels like to look back at the first season, and more.

Noah's answer is immediate: It's "surreal". “There’s no other experience like this. It’s so rare… only comparable to something like Harry Potter, where kids grow up through the entire series,” he shares. For the duo, those early episodes are crystallised versions of childhood—raw and earnest—before they fully understood what acting even felt like. They’ve both rewatched those early moments with a mixture of amusement and affection.

For Millie, that early awkwardness is a badge of honour. She has spoken about how those initial seasons were essentially “practice”; except their learning curves played out for millions to see. But what makes that vulnerability easier to hold is that neither of them had to go through it alone. Millie says, “Most people get to navigate TV or movies alone, but the beauty of our situation is that we had each other.” She often reflects on how rare it is for young actors to navigate a project of this scale with peers who are growing at the same pace, facing the same pressures, learning the same lessons. “It’s a little embarrassing. But I’m proud of what we’ve done. We handled it with grace, love, humility. We were brave to do that. I am very proud of us,” the young actress says, disarming us with rare honesty. 

That support system; built across night shoots, press tours, rehearsals, and the shared exhaustion of long filming days, has given them a sense of stability in an industry that’s anything but predictable. While the world watched Eleven discover her power and Will Byers face the darkest corners of the Upside Down, Millie and Noah were quietly discovering who they were becoming as performers.

Millie has noticed a particular evolution in Noah; a seriousness, a thoughtful approach to scenes which wasn’t present in the early days. “I love watching him work,” she adds. Where childhood emotions were once instinctive, he now takes a moment to step into the emotional weight of a performance. Watching that growth, she says, has been one of her favourite parts of their shared journey. He, in turn, sees in her an artist constantly pushing the boundaries of her craft, who approaches each season asking how she can elevate what she has already mastered. “She’s always searching to expand. Never comfortable keeping anything the same. It’s a positive,” he smiles, before they share a BFF moment, holding hands and acknowledging how far they have come. 

It’s a reflection that says as much about their friendship as it does about their acting. This mutual admiration is the quiet spine of Stranger Things, the invisible thread that made their on-screen connection feel so real. When Stranger Things premiered in 2016, nobody predicted it would become a modern pop culture reset. Yet within weeks, Hawkins became a global language. 80s nostalgia returned in full force, synthwave soundtracks surged, vintage sneakers reappeared on moodboards, and Kate Bush climbed the charts she hadn’t visited in decades.

(Also Read: What the Stranger Things cast looked like then and now)

But for Millie and Noah, the phenomenon wasn’t just cultural; it was personal. They were growing at the exact same pace as their characters, season after season. Eleven’s emotional complexity deepened as Millie matured. Will’s trauma and resilience sharpened as Noah understood more of the world. Their evolution became the show’s evolution.

Now, with season 5 closing the loop, the nostalgia isn’t just stylistic, it’s lived-in. The series is fully aware that its young cast has carried the emotional narrative as much as the supernatural one, and the final season leans into that arc with surprising tenderness. Their friendship, grounded in loyalty and built on years of shared milestones, feels like the show’s true legacy.

Beyond the monsters and mysteries, Stranger Things gave the world a pair of young performers who define what it means to grow with humility in the spotlight. As the curtain falls on Hawkins, Millie Bobby Brown and Noah Schnapp step out of the Upside Down not just as global names, but as two people who found, in each other, the kind of bond that fame doesn’t create, but certainly strengthens.

Edited by Dayle Pereira-Alemao

(Also Read: Stranger Things' Steve Harrington's character arc from Hawkins' bad boy to TV beloved)