Noah Schnapp Says People Approach Him Thinking He’s Harry Potter: ‘Wrong Franchise’

Noah Schnapp has plenty of encounters with fans — and sometimes they’re not even his own.

The Stranger Things star, 21, appeared on the Dec. 3 episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, where he discussed the fifth and final season of the Netflix series a decade after joining the cast at age 11. The show has developed a massive fan base over the years, which Schnapp admitted makes for some wild encounters.

“When we’re all together, it’s kind of insanity,” he said of being in public with his co-stars. “But I will say, actually, when I’m alone, I’ve been getting Harry Potter the past few years. It happened three times last year, which has never happened to me before.”

“People think you’re Harry Potter?” host Jimmy Fallon questioned.

“Yeah,” the actor confirmed of being mistaken for Daniel Radcliffe’s iconic character. “They’ll come up to me and they’ll be like, ‘I love your show. Thank you.’ And I’m like, ‘Thank you so much. I appreciate the support.’ And then they’re like, ‘I adore Harry Potter. I love the character.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, wrong franchise.’ ”

Fallon then pointed out that “there are some similarities” between Stranger Things and Harry Potter, which Schnapp agreed with.

“ ‘The Boy Who Lived,’ ‘Zombie Boy,’” he said, the former being Harry Potter’s nickname and the latter being his Stranger Things character Will Byers’. “It kind of parallels.”

The comparison of the two franchises is nothing new. In recent interview with PEOPLE, Schnapp’s castmate Cara Buono — who plays Karen Wheeler, mom to Nancy (Natalia Dyer), Mike (Finn Wolfhard) and Holly (Nell Fisher), in Stranger Things — revealed that fans have noted the commonalities between her character’s defense of Holly and Mrs. Weasley’s defense of her daughter Ginny (Bonnie Wright) in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.

“I love all the Harry Potter movies, I’ve been seeing that comparison,” Buono shared. “No one would have seen that coming [from Molly Weasley], right? She was always a homemaker and, like, ‘Come in, Harry, sit down.’ She’s like a warm cup of tea. I’ve been enjoying that comparison.”

The overlap is particularly prevalent in the Stranger Things: The First Shadow play, which opened earlier this year in New York City following its successful premiere on London’s West End in December 2023 (where it is still playing). The story was conceived by Stranger Things creators, directors and executive producers Duffer Brothers, as well as Harry Potter and the Cursed Child scribe Jack Thorne and Stranger Things writer and co-executive producer Kate Trefry.

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Vol. 1 of Stranger Things season 5 is now streaming on Netflix. Vol. 2 drops Dec. 25 with three episodes, and the finale drops Dec. 31 at 8 p.m. ET.