‘One Battle After Another’ Star Chase Infiniti Is Breaking Out

For Chase Infiniti the future truly is limitless. The 25-year-old Indianapolis native has achieved two major feats in the last two years: holding her own alongside Ruth Negga and Jake Gyllenhaal in Apple TV+’s Presumed Innocent — her first onscreen part — and then playing a key role in her first feature, Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, with Leonardo DiCaprio, Benicio del Toro, Sean Penn, Regina Hall and Teyana Taylor.

“You couldn’t have told me three years ago that I would be where I am now, and getting the opportunity to be in the rooms or projects that I’m in with some of the most legendary people in the industry — it’s unbelievable,” Infiniti says.

Infiniti credits the “sheer determination of a 10-year-old” and living in a “creative-forward household” for setting her on this path. Her parents often took her and her sister to theater productions, fueling a desire to emulate what she saw onstage. “I never wanted to do anything else,” she says. “My parents showered me with so much love that I felt empowered, but they also taught me that with dedication and hard work, you get what you want.”

In high school, she threw herself into choir and theater, later joining Indianapolis’ Summer Stock Stage program, where she starred as Dragon in Shrek the Musical at 15 and the Leading Player in Pippin at 17. In 2022, just a year after earning her musical theater degree from Columbia College Chicago, her hard work paid off. She would go on to book Presumed Innocent, playing the teenage daughter of Negga and Gyllenhaal, and while working on that she learned about the audition for One Battle After Another — an opportunity she almost missed in her crowded inbox. While sifting through “a significant number of auditions,” Infiniti noticed an email about a mysterious, anonymous project. Intrigued, she submitted a self-tape and moved on, unaware that it would lead to multiple callbacks and an invitation from Anderson to attend a four-day intensive karate training class in LA. Upon completion of the class, he offered her the role. “My brain could not compute how massive this project was,” Infiniti laughs.

In the film, Infiniti plays Willa Ferguson, the fearless daughter of former revolutionaries Bob Ferguson (DiCaprio) and Perfidia Beverly Hills (Taylor). Willa is forced to flee Bob and Perfidia’s nemesis, Colonel Lockjaw (Penn), who is determined to hunt her down. “I didn’t get the script until halfway through auditioning,” Infiniti says. “But when I did, it was a real page-turner. Willa has no fear. I can relate to her stubbornness and resilience, but I don’t think I could handle what she goes through. Her strength is never-ending.”

One of the film’s pivotal scenes involves Willa’s verbal and physical confrontation with Lockjaw, a racist who suspects Willa may be his mixed-race daughter after a past liaison with Perfidia. His obsession with killing her is rooted in his desire to join an elite white supremacist group, where interracial relationships are forbidden.

“It was so rewarding getting to work with Sean Penn,” Infiniti says. “Paul, Sean and I created this dance of how the DNA test scene would go. We played with it in so many ways, and it became one of my favorite scenes. You finally see the two people who should never meet come face-to-face. Willa becomes truly fearless with someone she should be terrified of, but she never shows it.”

Working with DiCaprio also shaped her process. He plays Bob as a well-meaning but paranoid, pot-addicted father struggling to raise a biracial daughter alone. “Leo taught me so much,” she says. “Watching the freedom he had with his character choices was wonderful. I feel fortunate to have worked on Paul’s set with such an incredible cast.”

Infiniti also drew from her own identity as a biracial woman, conversations with Anderson — who has a biracial family with partner Maya Rudolph — and her interactions with his children. “Paul and I talked a lot about Willa being mixed race and about his life with his kids,” she explains. “I brought my experiences as a mixed 16-year-old in spaces where you don’t feel like you see anyone who looks like you.”

Now that One Battle is behind her, Infiniti is looking ahead as she prepares for what is destined to be a meteoric rise. She has already been cast in The Handmaid’s Tale spin-off, The Testaments, and the coming-of-age drama The Julia Set alongside Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs.

“Willa’s fearlessness is on a completely different level from mine,” Infiniti says. “But I love pushing myself, especially in acting, because it helps me discover more about who I am. I’m only 25 — I have so much more life to experience. On Paul’s movie, on The Testaments, on Presumed Innocent, I learned things about myself. Every job teaches me something, and I can’t wait to keep being a student. The fearlessness with work comes from the urge to continue to learn.”