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Rise to Fame
He didn't go to that community theater audition for himself. He went because his younger sister didn't want to go alone. That accident eventually put him on Broadway as Young Simba in The Lion King. By 2016, Netflix cast him as Lucas Sinclair in Stranger Things, a nerdy kid from Hawkins, Indiana navigating demogorgons and middle school simultaneously. The show became a cultural phenomenon, and the world knew his name before he turned 15.
In the Spotlight
At his first Comic-Con, fans skipped his autograph line. He was barely a teenager. His parents told him the reason: it's because you're Black. He went public about it in 2022 at a convention in Brussels, telling the crowd it 'definitely took a toll on me as a younger kid.' Outside Stranger Things, his film career has been quieter than his profile suggests. Concrete Cowboy gave him a real lead role, and GOAT hit theaters in February 2026. Whether that translates into sustained film work is the open question.
Side Notes
He trained in ballet, tap, and jazz at the Harlem School of the Arts, studying under Aubrey Lynch, an original cast member and associate producer of The Lion King on Broadway. There's something circular about that: he played Young Simba on the same show his mentor helped build. Years later, during Stranger Things' peak cultural moment, he deleted his social media accounts and said he was getting closer to God. For a kid whose entire career arrived while the internet watched, that counted as a genuine act of self-preservation.