Need Someone to Play a Famous Actor’s Kid? Call Chase Infiniti

What’s in a name? For Chase Infiniti, it’s her destiny, wrapped up in two iconic movie characters: criminal psychologist Dr. Chase Meridian, played by Nicole Kidman in 1995’s Batman Forever, and Buzz Lightyear. Her parents got her middle name from the latter’s catchphrase, “to infinity and beyond.” She has a last name too; it’s Payne. But she’s gone by just “Chase Infiniti” since she started pursuing an acting career. (The Paynes must have a knack for precognition: Infiniti’s younger sister, who wants to work in fashion, is named Dolcé.)

Three years ago, Infiniti was doing plays locally in the Chicago area. Then she was cast as Jake Gyllenhaal and Ruth Negga’s daughter in Presumed Innocent. This fall the 25-year-old stars in Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic One Battle After Another, holding her own opposite icons like Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn. On top of that, she’s also playing the grown-up version of Elisabeth Moss’s character’s daughter Hannah in The Testaments, the sequel to Hulu’s hit series The Handmaid’s Tale. “It feels like sort of a fairy-tale journey so far,” says Infiniti. “I am pinching myself.”

Anderson was scouring the earth for a performer with gymnastics or martial arts experience to play the daughter of DiCaprio and Teyana Taylor’s characters when Infiniti’s self-tape came to his attention. At the time, she had no idea that either of those stars were attached to One Battle After Another; she didn’t know much about the movie’s Oscar-nominated director, either. “I was not familiar with Paul’s work,” she admits. “But I was like, it sounds cool. I’d love to do something action.”

Loosely based on Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland, One Battle After Another is centered on Bob Ferguson (DiCaprio), a former member of a revolutionary group whose daughter Willa goes missing while they’re both being pursued by a vengeful military leader (Penn). But Bob has raised her to be able to defend herself against danger—though Willa doesn’t understand why her father’s so paranoid until it’s too late. “The character she plays is the center of the film. She’s the heart. She’s one of the few people in the film who’s not mentally unstable,” says Anderson. “No pressure.”

The filmmaker saw “every young woman in the United States and beyond” before picking Infiniti. Her audition process included a chemistry read with DiCaprio, a particularly surreal experience. “I had a period in my high school years where I was obsessed with the movie Catch Me If You Can, and I would watch it all the time,” she says. “So seeing him in real life, it was a crazy full-circle moment.”

Infiniti had been a kickboxing trainer, but she still spent months training in both karate and mixed martial arts for the role. Willa is supposed to be a purple belt; “I cannot say I’m purple-belt status, but I think I got decent,” she says. As she perfected her fighting skills, Anderson also helped Infiniti expand her horizons via movie nights where they watched classics like John Ford’s The Searchers and Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon. “He’s a very playful person,” she says. “He gave me permission to play, which felt very liberating.” Anderson returns the favor: “I was more worried for Sean and Leo in the combative scenes than I was for Chase,” he says. “She can hold her own.”

When Infiniti and I sit down for dinner after her first-ever Los Angeles press day—part of a whirlwind, three-day trip that ends when she heads back to Toronto to continue filming The Testaments—she immediately compliments the bandage dress that the woman next to us is wearing. “I’ve got to tell you—you’re so beautiful,” the woman responds. “When you walked in, I went ‘wow.’”

Infiniti’s openness seems slightly shocking to a jaded LA resident, until you remember that she’s from the Midwest. Infiniti was born and raised in Indianapolis, where her father owns a construction company. Her mother stayed at home to raise Infiniti and Dolcé, often taking them to the theater. When she was 10, Infiniti’s mother suggested she audition for a school musical. It was love at first sight: “I was like, ‘I want to do this for the rest of my life.’”

Infiniti studied musical theater at Columbia College Chicago, with plans to pursue a career onstage. When her education moved online thanks to COVID, what could have been a severe blow ended up being a great lesson—and a turning point—after Infiniti signed up for an on-camera acting class. But she didn’t take seriously the professor who told her to consider pursuing a film career, rather than staying with theater. “I was like, ‘Oh yeah, sure, whatever,’” she says. “It’d be great if I could say one line in a movie or one line in a TV show—then I’d be happy.”

Then her 2022 senior showcase caught the attention of a manager. “I thought he was a scam at first,” she says. “It was too easy—there’s no way I’d get that lucky day one.” But sure enough, that manager helped her get an agent. Infiniti started auditioning—and auditioning and auditioning, averaging five tryouts per week over the span of six months.

She tried not to get too wrapped up in all the rejection. Her father “always instilled in me that you have to get comfortable with ‘no,’” she says. But at one point, she botched a callback so badly that she wasn’t sure she should keep trying, and called her agent in tears. “I just did such a horrible job, and I was so embarrassed because I had gone to New York for this and I practiced so hard,” Infiniti says. Her agent soothed her: “It wasn’t for you. Doesn’t mean that you’re not talented.” A few months later, Infiniti booked Presumed Innocent.

Just as with One Battle After Another, Infiniti didn’t know exactly what she was signing on for when she joined the David E. Kelley show. It wasn’t until the series was shooting that she discovered its twist. In this version of the story—which follows a prosecutor (Gyllenhaal) suspected of murdering his colleague—the actual killer is none other than Infiniti’s character. “I found out on my birthday that I did it,” she says. Her shock was immediately followed by dread at having to act out the series’ emotional finale reveal. “I got in my own way a couple times, and I was like, ‘Well, just forget about it. You’re doing the thing you’ve always wanted to do. Just relax and go and feel.’”

There was a steep learning curve for Infiniti on her first major production. “I was so nervous, so anxious,” she says. “I was like, ‘I don’t know where I need to not look.’” She would come to set even on the days she wasn’t filming, just to absorb as much as she could. Off camera, Infiniti was also feeling a culture shock after moving to Los Angeles from Chicago for the shoot. “When I first got here, I felt the city was very lonely,” she says. “I don’t know why I came to LA thinking I was in the Midwest and that everyone would say hi to you as you walked down the street.” She didn’t know many people at the time, but grew up a lot during those months. “I got comfortable hanging out by myself.”

Infiniti has spent much of this year in Gilead. She, Ann Dowd, and Lucy Halliday play the three leads in The Testaments, set several years after the events of The Handmaid’s Tale. “It’s a side of Gilead that you really don’t see in Handmaid’s Tale,” Infiniti says. “There’s a certain lightness that The Testaments has that everybody is trying very hard to maintain. I think that is what makes it so special—it has a very different tone.”

Because she’s been in Toronto filming most of this year, she’s been carrying around a twinge of homesickness for Chicago, where she’s lived since college. “It’s a perfect small big city and you learn your way around really quickly,” she says. “It just has a charm.”

Chicago is also where she and her friends formed the Duple Dance Crew. For several years, they’ve been posting videos of their performances to K-pop songs on social media. Her eyes light up when she talks about K-pop: “It is one of the most fun things to watch and to experience ever,” she says. “And I met a lot of friends through that.” (Her favorite group is ATEEZ, with whom she’s been obsessed since 2018.)

Though Infiniti loves performing, she’s still figuring out how to be herself on promotional tours. She missed both the premiere of and press interviews for Presumed Innocent because she was busy filming One Battle After Another, meaning that, as noted, she has never before faced this kind of sustained press. At dinner, she’s still slightly dazed from spending most of the day at a junket, where actors do back-to-back interviews with multiple outlets. “It’s very scary, because I’m a very anxious person,” she says. “What if I say the wrong thing?”

Infiniti hasn’t booked her next project after The Testaments, though that series could potentially last for several seasons. She hopes to voice an animated character someday—“My dream has always been to be a Disney princess, as I’m sure everybody else’s dream on the planet is”—and would love to be in a movie musical. (Which one? “If anybody ever makes a movie of Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, I need an audition for that. I don’t even need to be cast—I just want an audition.”)

Whether that happens or not, she’s confident that she’ll make it back to her musical theater roots someday. “Broadway has been the goal since I was a kid,” she says. “I know that this is something I will do. I don’t know when it’s going to happen, but I know it’s going to be something I do.” And she’s also hopeful that the barriers that have long existed in Hollywood—like a lack of opportunities for people of mixed race—won’t be an issue for her. “It’s a hurdle that I am aware of, but it wasn’t something that was going to stop me from working, if that makes sense,” she says.

When she talks about the future, Infiniti doesn’t come off as egotistical or overly confident. With a path that’s been written in the stars since her first moments earthside, why shouldn’t Chase Infiniti be optimistic?