Are Millie Bobby Brown, Noah Schnapp at War? Actress' Birthday Guest List Sparks 'Stranger Things' Worry

The photographs from Millie Bobby Brown's 22nd birthday are glossy, expensive and carefully curated. New York skyline, candlelit dinner, the sort of ice-white flowers you only see in magazines. For Stranger Things fans, though, one detail cut through the soft lighting like a neon sign in Hawkins: almost none of her co‑stars were there.

Just two of them, in fact—and they were not the ones many were expecting.

At a private party in New York City, held a week after castmate Maya Hawke's low-key wedding, Brown celebrated with her husband, Jake Bongiovi, and a circle of friends outside the industry. From the Stranger Things cast, only Jamie Campbell Bower, who plays the villain Vecna, and David Harbour, the show's gruff father figure, Jim Hopper, were seen in attendance. Director and executive producer Shawn Levy was also pictured at the gathering.

Notably absent from the photos was Noah Schnapp, who has spent years publicly calling Brown his 'best friend,' along with the rest of the show's original teen ensemble. Within hours, social media timelines were filled with forensic guest‑list analysis and the inevitable question: are Millie Bobby Brown and Noah Schnapp still as close as they say they are, or has the off‑screen 'family' fractured as Stranger Things heads towards its end?

Are Millie Bobby Brown and Noah Schnapp Really 'at War'?

If the headlines alone are skimmed, it sounds brutal. Brown reportedly skipped Maya Hawke's wedding earlier this month, then held a birthday party at which almost none of her Stranger Things co-stars were present. That double blow has fuelled a minor moral panic on TikTok and X over a supposed divide within one of television's most closely followed casts.

Brown has spent nearly a decade insisting the ensemble are like siblings. Schnapp has been even more effusive. Speaking to People at a Stranger Things premiere, he said: 'I mean, of course, Millie is my best friend for life. But they all truly are just family to me, and it shows on screen. I mean, thank God we're so close.'

For fans who grew up alongside them, the idea that the 'best friends for life' phase might have quietly ended is uncomfortable. The show sells nostalgia for a tight‑knit gang who never drift apart; real life, inconveniently, usually has other plans.

There is another layer of confusion. Years ago, the Daily Mail pushed reports of behind‑the‑scenes tension between Brown and David Harbour. In that tabloid framing, she was the ascendant superstar, he the grizzled veteran, and the two allegedly clashed. Fast‑forward to this month and Harbour is one of just two colleagues invited to toast her birthday in New York.

When Brown spoke to Deadline in 2025 about working so closely with Harbour, her language was disarmingly warm. 'Of course, I felt safe. I mean, we've worked together for 10 years,' she said. 'I feel safe with everyone on that set. You naturally just, you know... you've been doing it for so long.'

She went further, pointing out the way their on‑screen dynamic had bled into their off‑screen relationship. 'We also play father and daughter, so naturally, you have a closer bond than the rest, because we have had some really intense scenes together, especially in season 2.'

Stranger Things, Grown‑Up Lives and a Shrinking Inner Circle

New York, London or Atlanta are just dots on a map. To the cast of a show like Stranger Things, they are work sites, press hubs and, sometimes, places you fly through on the way to somewhere else. Fans sometimes imagine the cast all live a street apart and spend their weekends together. In reality, they are scattered across the US and Europe with conflicting schedules, private partners and, in Brown's case, a very public marriage.

That does not make the empty spaces in those party photos any less stark. It does, however, offer less dramatic explanations. Not every adult friendship survives the leap from teenage set days to marriages, solo careers and competing projects. Not every missed event is a declaration of war.

Still, where the show once projected near-perfect off-screen unity, observers are now left piecing together faint signals: Brown skipping Hawke's wedding, the tightly edited guest list for her own birthday, Schnapp's absence despite repeated 'best friend' soundbites. No one involved has suggested any formal falling-out, but the days of the cast presenting as a single, inseparable unit may quietly be over.