{"id":840675,"date":"2025-12-03T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=840675"},"modified":"2025-12-03T17:00:00","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T14:00:00","slug":"chase-infiniti-one-breakthrough-after-another","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=840675","title":{"rendered":"Chase Infiniti: One breakthrough after another"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Chase Infiniti \u2013 The Winter Issue 2025<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/header>\n
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\"Chase<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/div>\n
\"Chase<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/div>\n
\"Chase<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/div>\n
\"Chase<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/div>\n
\"Chase<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/div>\n
\"Chase<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Gallery \/ 7 images<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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This story is taken from the winter 2025 issue of Dazed, which is on sale internationally from December 5. Pre-order a copy of the magazine <\/span><\/em>here<\/span><\/em><\/a>.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

One day in early September, <\/span>Chase Infiniti<\/span><\/a> was sitting in her new apartment in Chicago, surrounded by boxes and quietly freaking out. The 25-year-old actor had recently returned home from Toronto, where she\u2019d spent the summer filming <\/span>The Testaments<\/span><\/em>, the sequel to the Hulu series <\/span>The Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/span><\/em>. In Canada, \u201cI was disconnected from everything,\u201d she says. But Infiniti knew her life was about to change. In a couple of days, she was leaving for Los Angeles to join castmates <\/span>Leonardo DiCaprio<\/span><\/a>, Benicio del Toro and <\/span>Teyana Taylor<\/span><\/a> to promote <\/span>One Battle After Another<\/span><\/em><\/a>, her debut feature film. \u201cEmotionally, it felt like it wasn\u2019t real,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When she landed in LA a few days later, everything went boom. As her black SUV pulled up outside the Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, Infiniti smoothed the champagne-coloured fabric of her custom Louis Vuitton gown and took a deep breath. \u201cI was about to get out of the car, and I told myself, \u2018You have nothing to prove and everything to show. Enjoy the moment, because you\u2019re gonna blink, and it\u2019s gonna be over,\u2019\u201d she remembers. The day of the film\u2019s world premiere was also \u201cmy first carpet, my first ever time promoting a movie, my first time ever doing an interview\u201d, she says. The red carpet passed by in a blur, but when Infiniti stepped on to the stage to introduce the movie, time suddenly froze. \u201cI had a moment of reality,\u201d she says. \u201cI remember looking to my side, like, \u2018What just happened?!\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"Chase<\/span><\/span>
All clothes and accessories worn throughout Louis Vuitton Cruise 2026. All fine jewellery worn
\nthroughout Louis Vuitton.<\/span><\/span>Photography Thurstan Redding, styling Isabelle Sayer<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Infiniti is the breakout star of <\/span>One Battle After Another<\/span><\/em>, the most ambitious movie to date from writer-director <\/span>Paul Thomas Anderson<\/span><\/a>. One of the defining auteur filmmakers of his generation, Anderson has never made a film on this scale \u2013 or this budget, which was reportedly upwards of $140m. A sprawling, madcap caper featuring car chases, freedom fighters and a convent of nuns who run a weed farm, it tells the story of star-crossed revolutionaries Perfidia (Taylor) and Bob (DiCaprio), who are forced apart and into hiding by Sean Penn\u2019s tyrannical Colonel Lockjaw. Infiniti plays the couple\u2019s 16-year-old daughter, Willa, a karate purple belt who has grown up off-grid and without her mother. When Willa goes missing, Bob must scramble to find her before white supremacist Lockjaw does.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFree borders, free bodies, free choice and free from fucking fear,\u201d is the mantra of the French 75, the film\u2019s fictional revolutionary group, who fight racism and the inhumane detainment of migrants. In <\/span>One Battle After Another<\/span><\/em>, Anderson forces the audience to confront America\u2019s shadow and then dares them to laugh at it. \u201cHe really loves comedy,\u201d <\/span>says Infiniti. \u201cYou\u2019re literally laughing at the absurdity of the circumstances for every single character.\u201d For Infiniti, to \u201ctell a story that\u2019s holding up a mirror to modern-day society but <\/span>have it be funny\u201d feels like a radical act. \u201cIt feels significant because we\u2019re in an era where new stories aren\u2019t being told. Especially stories that are considered risky.\u201d The riskiness is making the industry sit up: in October, <\/span>Variety<\/span><\/em><\/a> announced Infiniti\u2019s campaign for the best actress Oscar.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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One Battle After Another<\/em> feels significant because we\u2019re in an era where new stories aren\u2019t being told. Especially stories that are considered risky<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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We meet early on a Saturday morning, at a cafe in South Kensington. I arrive a few minutes late to find Infiniti already sitting at our table; she pulls a pair of wired earphones from her ears and greets me with a huge smile and a hug. The actor is incognito today, hair freshly braided and dressed in a cream knitted jumper, baggy blue jeans and trainers. Although her face is currently splashed across London buses, she insists that \u201cnobody ever recognises me\u201d. I warn her that might not be the case for long. \u201cTrust me!\u201d she says. \u201cWhen I tell you I be roaming the streets\u2026\u201d she gives me a conspiratorial grin as two coffees and an orange juice arrive at the table. Stirring honey into her espresso, she insists: \u201cNobody can pick me out, especially when my hair is different.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One Battle After Another<\/span><\/em> is loosely based on Thomas Pynchon\u2019s postmodern novel Vineland, but the dynamic between its central father-daughter duo is shaped by Anderson\u2019s own family life. In the film, DiCaprio\u2019s Bob is the white father of a mixed-race daughter; in real life, so is Anderson. \u201cTheir relationship is nowhere near as crazy as Bob and Willa\u2019s, but there were pieces I could pick up on through what he would tell me about his experience of being a father to a biracial daughter,\u201d Infiniti explains. She says she could relate to being biracial \u201cand feeling like you\u2019re missing a part of yourself\u201d, adding that she didn\u2019t look like the other mixed-race kids at school in Indianapolis. \u201cI can definitely understand feeling like you don\u2019t fully belong in your environment.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"Chase<\/span><\/span>
All clothes and accessories worn throughout Louis Vuitton Cruise 2026. All fine jewellery worn
\nthroughout Louis Vuitton.<\/span><\/span>Photography Thurstan Redding, styling Isabelle Sayer<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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That understanding helped her get into Willa\u2019s head. A stoic and self-sufficient 16-year-old, the character lives in \u201ca neighbourhood that literally has no other Black people, no one to help her with her hair, or any sense of community, or her connection to her mom.\u201d Bob is fiercely protective and occasionally bumbling. \u201cBob can\u2019t see. The only way to help her is to introduce her to somebody in her life who looks like her,\u201d she adds.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Chase Infiniti Payne was born in Indianapolis to a Black father and a white mother. She grew up on the cusp of the white neighbourhoods and the Black neighbourhoods, just outside the city. A sporty child who spent her time playing tennis and football, as well as doing track and field, Infiniti and her younger sister would ride their bikes with their parents on weekends. It was a creative household: her dad ran a construction company but he was also a drummer. \u201cHe used to be in a jazz band, so I grew up with music constantly playing at home,\u201d she says. \u201cI was always singing and putting on shows for my parents.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"Chase<\/span><\/span>
All clothes and accessories worn throughout Louis Vuitton Cruise 2026. All fine jewellery worn
\nthroughout Louis Vuitton.<\/span><\/span>Photography Thurstan Redding, styling Isabelle Sayer<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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At ten years old, Infiniti gave her first official performance, a showcase of songs from musicals she performed in a group for her school. From the first day of rehearsals, her fate was decided. \u201cI was like, \u2018I want to do this,\u2019\u201d she says, her face lighting up as she recounts a story of being taken to see a production of <\/span>Grease<\/span><\/em> as a pre-teen. Infiniti sat next to her mother and watched from the balcony in awe. \u201cI distinctly remember Rizzo singing \u201cThere Are Worse Things I Could Do<\/span>\u201d<\/span><\/em>. That\u2019s when I got the \u2018I love watching theatre\u2019 bug,\u201d she says with a beatific sigh. When I tell her that musical theatre isn\u2019t something most people think of as cool, she starts laughing. \u201cYeah, I know,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But the last year has seen Infiniti leading a Paul Thomas Anderson film, starring in a Tyler, the Creator music video (\u201cDarling, I\u201d), and sitting front row at the Louis Vuitton show at Paris fashion week. I wonder where the earnest theatre nerd finds herself among all of that. \u201cI\u2019m very big in my expressions,\u201d she says, although I find her more poised than goofy. \u201cI go into projects with theatre-kid energy.\u201d It\u2019s a part of herself she hasn\u2019t lost; she still listens to musical soundtracks all the time and talks about them to anyone who will listen. One day, during the filming of <\/span>One Battle After Another<\/span><\/em>, she bumped into DiCaprio on the street. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe ended up grabbing ice cream and I was telling him about [the musicals of] <\/span>Catch Me If You Can<\/span><\/em> and <\/span>The Great Gatsby<\/span><\/em>, because there was a production [of Gatsby] that was about to go on Broadway.\u201d She beams. \u201cSo, trust, it\u2019s my first love.\u201d In high school, she says people would roll their eyes when they learned about <\/span>her passion for musicals. \u201cI think that falling into the, as you said, \u2018cool\u2019 world I\u2019m in now was something I didn\u2019t think was possible,\u201d she explains. \u201cI\u2019m being pushed in ways I couldn\u2019t <\/span>have been pushed on stage.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/em> felt insane because I was like, \u2018There\u2019s no way these things could happen.\u2019 But Margaret Atwood didn\u2019t write anything that wasn\u2019t happening in the world<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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Still, the stage has brought Infiniti to where she is today. She trained in musical theatre at Columbia College in Chicago, where she\u2019s lived since she was 18. Studying during the pandemic meant a lot of classes shifted online, but it also taught Infiniti about working to the confines of a screen. She also learned the art of the self-tape. \u201cI\u2019ve actually never done an in-person audition for a TV show or a movie, and I\u2019ve been auditioning for almost three years now,\u201d she admits.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Her first successful audition took her to LA for <\/span>Presumed Innocent<\/span><\/em>, a thriller series starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Ruth Negga. She lived in LA for five months; it was the furthest she\u2019d been from home for more than a week. \u201cI didn\u2019t know anyone. It was my first TV show, my first job ever,\u201d she says. Learning the culture of a set was one thing; she knew she\u2019d have to learn technical things. More nerve-racking was being on her own in the city, with no one to show her around. \u201cI was scared about being by myself,\u201d she says, but she left the show with two friends: the series\u2019 key costume designer, and Ruth Negga, who played her mother.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"Chase<\/span><\/span>
All clothes and accessories worn throughout Louis Vuitton Cruise 2026. All fine jewellery worn
\nthroughout Louis Vuitton.<\/span><\/span>Photography Thurstan Redding, styling Isabelle Sayer<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Infiniti\u2019s next challenge will be to shed light on another aspect of America\u2019s dark side. Where <\/span>One Battle After Another<\/span><\/em> satirises the country\u2019s festering racism, <\/span>The Testaments<\/span><\/em> explores its deep-rooted misogyny and takes it to a brutal extreme. Based on the sequel to Margaret Atwood\u2019s seminal dystopian novel <\/span>The Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/span><\/em>, the story is set in the fictional totalitarian state of Gilead, where women are stripped of their most basic rights. They are forbidden to own money or property, banned from reading and writing and, if fertile, forced into pregnancy. With the hard-won constitutional right to abortion overturned in the US in 2022, today, Atwood\u2019s dystopia feels less and less like fiction. Infiniti plays Agnes, a student and one of three narrators. \u201cYou\u2019re getting to see what it\u2019s like growing up in Gilead from somebody who has no opinion of the world outside,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/span><\/em> series came out in 2017, when Infiniti was still in high school. \u201cIt was not one of my shows because it was too heavy at times, for what I needed,\u201d she recalls. \u201cAt 17 it felt like a world that was so insane to conceptualise because I was like, \u2018There\u2019s no way these things can actually happen in real life,\u2019\u201d she explains. \u201cBut, as I\u2019ve learned, Margaret Atwood didn\u2019t write anything that wasn\u2019t happening in the world.\u201d Many of the things in the show, she says, \u201cfeel very close\u201d and will hit home for a lot of people. \u201cI hope that it wakes people up.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"Chase<\/span><\/span>
All clothes and accessories worn throughout Louis Vuitton Cruise 2026. All fine jewellery worn
\nthroughout Louis Vuitton.<\/span><\/span>Photography Thurstan Redding, styling Isabelle Sayer<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Infiniti tells me she always wanted to be thought of as \u201cthe serious actor who doesn\u2019t let anything stand in the way of their craft\u201d. But since booking a slew of serious jobs, something has shifted. In her theatre training, she used to be \u201cvery specific about everything\u201d \u2013 disciplined and precise, to a fault. \u201cI was like, \u2018I have to make sure that I\u2019m perfect, or I\u2019m saying everything at the correct time, creating the replication of emotion every single night.\u2019\u201d She realised it wasn\u2019t possible. \u201cThat\u2019s not creating \u2013 that\u2019s planning, preparing and keeping everything in check.\u201d Her perfectionist streak, she learned, could be a stumbling block. \u201cOn Presumed Innocent<\/em> I was trying so hard to show up and show out every day, and I think I was harsh on myself,\u201d she says. Now, she\u2019s learning to be more present with her fellow actors. \u201cInstead of showing off, I just want to make myself proud.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

A few weeks ago, when Infiniti was on stage for a Q&A in New York, the moderator asked the cast to share a victory they had felt while filming <\/span>One Battle After Another<\/span><\/em>. \u201cThat I\u2019m proud of what I did,\u201d said Infiniti, becoming emotional. \u201cFor me personally, it\u2019s hard for me to say I\u2019m happy with what I did.\u201d But in the moment, she felt it. \u201cI\u2019ve been trying to make sure I don\u2019t forget that feeling.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Hair Cyndia Harvey at Art Partner using L\u2019Or\u00e9al Professionnel, make-up Mel Arter at Julian Watson Agency using La Beaut\u00e9 Louis Vuitton, nails Lauren Michelle Pires using The Gel Bottle, set design Samuel Overs at New School Represents, movement direction Yagamoto at New School Represents, lighting Simon Wellington, photographic assistants Sam Hendel, Dylan Massara, styling assistants Cait Hallam, Olivia Blewitt, hair assistant Karen Bradshaw, nails assistant Megan Cumming, set design assistant Henry Hawksworth, tailoring Takudzwa Chigaduro at The Lede Company, production Thea Charlesworth at the Arcade, on-set production Claire Nichols, production assistant Cecelia Kerwin, printing Sarah England, post-production artpost, casting gk-ld.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

This story is taken from the winter 2025 issue of Dazed, which is on sale internationally from December 5. Pre-order a copy of the magazine <\/span><\/em>here<\/span><\/em><\/a>.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

More on these topics:<\/span>Film & TV<\/a>The Winter 2025 Issue<\/a>Chase Infiniti<\/a>Paul Thomas Anderson<\/a>Leonardo DiCaprio<\/a>The Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/a>Film<\/a>Television<\/a>Teyana Taylor<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Source URL: https:\/\/www.dazeddigital.com\/film-tv\/article\/69163\/1\/chase-infiniti-i-can-understand-feeling-like-you-dont-belong<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chase Infiniti \u2013 The Winter Issue 2025 Gallery \/ 7 images This story is taken from the winter 2025 issue of Dazed, which is on sale internationally from December 5. Pre-order a copy of the magazine here. One day in early September, Chase Infiniti was sitting in her new apartment in Chicago, surrounded by boxes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[76],"class_list":["post-840675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-dazeddigital-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=840675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840675\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=840675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=840675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=840675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}