“I’m still trying to process everything that’s happened in the past three years and then process what’s even happening now.”

To say it’s been a whirlwind period for Chase Infiniti would be an understatement. After leading the critically acclaimed, Paul Thomas Anderson–helmed comedy-meets-action thriller One Battle After Another (OBAA), the actress has garnered a bevy of award nominations, including nods from the Golden Globes, The Actor Awards (formerly SAG Awards), the NAACP Image Awards, and being an honoree at this year’s Black Women in Hollywood event.

It’s a scenario most could only dream of, and yet, the 25-year-old has accomplished it all with her first feature film.

She’s been working hard. Last March, Infiniti flew to Toronto to film Hulu’s The Testaments, the highly anticipated Handmaid’s Tale spin-off. After wrapping production in mid-August, she hopped right into promotion for OBAA in September before jetting off to London for six weeks to film The Julia Set, a mathematician competition drama that she auditioned for the same week she tried out for OBAA.

“I think being able to play with that versatility and that variety with [roles] is something that I want to put out into the world because I don’t want to put myself in a box,” Infiniti asserts over a Zoom call in mid-January. “Nobody should put themselves in a box.”

The ingenue was born and raised in Indianapolis, by two loving parents alongside her younger sister, Dolce. She might have been destined to be in the spotlight from birth, as she’s named after Nicole Kidman’s Batman Forever character Chase Meridian, and Buzz Lightyear’s signature catchphrase “to infinity and beyond” from Toy Story. With a family always supportive of her dreams, when being a performer became her goal, that backing cultivated a certain fearlessness that’s endearingly evident when you speak with her.

That spark was what her now-manager, Ken Lee, saw in her early on. That’s what led to him reaching out to her directly just two days before she graduated from college after watching her musical theater performances which were part of her senior showcase.

“I thought he was a scam. Like, I literally thought it was a joke,” Infiniti admits. “I remember in my first time meeting him that he was just such a kind person who had incredible energy. I think that, as opposed to somebody who is like, ‘I can offer you X, Y and Z,’ was very comforting.”

It was especially reassuring considering Infiniti’s college experience. About midway through her studies at Columbia College in Chicago, COVID-19 impacted the world we once knew, leaving the actress and countless other students to figure out how to finish their degrees in an unorthodox way.

“In an industry that’s so focused on the human connection and relying on that, I was like, I don’t know if I want to act anymore. And I genuinely, for the first time in my life, considered if I should do something else,” she admits.

In her first couple of years in school, Infiniti had been putting a lot of pressure on herself to do well. Every waking moment was an opportunity to set herself up for a career as a performer and, at times, she put those efforts in overdrive.

“I just realized the way I was pushing myself was very unhealthy for me, mentally, and I was doing it in a way that wasn’t safe,” she shares. “You are always looking at the person next to you, and it almost becomes competitive in a sense where you’re like 18, 19 trying to figure out where you fit in the world.”

Isolated during the pandemic, Infiniti was forced to slow down and reassess what she wanted her life to look like. It’s the kind of off-script moment that no one saw coming but was absolutely necessary for the artist’s trajectory.

“I fell back in love with performing and shifted my perspective on how I approach it and where my priorities are,” she says. “And that’s honestly the thing that caused the big shift. The moment that changed the trajectory of my life was literally the lockdown.”

She would receive her diploma in 2022 and just a few months after graduation be cast in Apple TV’s Presumed Innocent. About a month into production, she received an email in her inbox with a subject that read “Untitled CK/PTA Studio Feature Film.” After learning about the project, she sent in a self-tape and a month later, Infiniti was meeting One Battle After Another director Paul Thomas Anderson and performing a chemistry read with Regina Hall and Leonardo DiCaprio.

“I could tell she had an innocence about her and a genuine likability,” Hall recalls to ESSENCE via email. “But I also noticed her work ethic and her ability to listen and take the subtlest direction.”

The next six months were filled with a series of reads, culminating in a karate intensive course.

“Paul watched my first lesson and then he watched my last lesson, which was like a group class,” she says. “I would take advanced classes at night. So, when he came to my final class at night, I was the only white belt in there. Everybody else was like brown and black belts, and I told myself, I’m just going to show up and do the best that I can and show that I have the mental strength to keep going even though I’m clearly the worst one in the class.”

Anderson offered her the part of Willa, and the rest was history: two months of training, six months of filming, countless hours of a press tour alongside the joke-cracking Hall and the ebullient Teyana Taylor, leading to a slew of glowing reviews and the inevitable spotlight during awards season.

Rounding out the film’s cast of heavy hitters is Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, Wood Harris and Tony Goldwyn. Infiniti is still trying to wrap her mind around the entire experience.

“I went into the production like, This is a golden opportunity that I’m not going to pass up. I’m giving it my all regardless,” she explains. “Having Paul be there and then Leo and Regina, gave me this perfect platform that is full of love and support. I felt like I could do this. I don’t know why I would be doubting myself in this moment ’cause I’ve trained for this.”

When asked about how Black women have shown up as guiding light in her life, Infiniti gushes about Hall, Taylor (our 2025 Fierce and Fearless Award honoree) and actress Ruth Negga, who portrayed her onscreen mother in Presumed Innocent. Like Infiniti, Negga is biracial, adding another layer of understanding that she’s grateful for when they’re able to catch up.

Infiniti then recounts a moment during the OBAA press tour that unlocked something in her understanding of self. For several weeks, Hall and Taylor had been prepping her for the changes that were going to come once the film released. “Do you know how much your life is about to change?” she recalls Taylor asking her one day.

Hall encouraged her to “own her moment”—a concept that Infiniti understood but didn’t fully grasp until she was at a panel discussion promoting the film. An audience member asked the participants, “What are you most proud of from the film?”

As everyone brought up specific moments onscreen or off, Infiniti remarked that she was just proud of the fact that she did the film and the performance she gave. The significance of the moment hit her like a ton of bricks.

“I just remember starting to bawl with 25 minutes left in the Q&A,” she says. “I was sitting next to Teyana and afterwards she was like, ‘Are you okay?’ I was like, ‘It just hit me what you and Regina were saying. Standing in your moment and owning what you did.’ And it was at that moment that I understood that feeling.”

Infiniti also leans on the lessons of her late paternal grandmother, LauWana Payne. As she fondly reminisces on her grandmother’s penchant for style and presentation (“even if she was going to the grocery store”), faith in God and habit of surrounding herself with genuine people, Infiniti lands on the ultimate insight shared by the matriarch: kindness.

“She would smile at everybody, speak to everybody—very midwestern of her,” she says with a laugh. “And I would always watch her with such admiration. Because I want to be a ball of light like she is. Who wouldn’t want to be like her? I miss her very much and I think about her often.”

These days, Infiniti calls Chicago home again. Among the everyday Black women who show up for her, like her friends, she’s not Chase Infiniti, the young breakthrough actress of the moment. She’s just Chase, and she says that kind of normalcy is important to keep as she continues to progress in her career.

“It’s definitely been a bit of a bumpy road. Bumpy in the sense of trying to figure out boundaries in my life,” she reflects when asked how it feels to come of age as her star rises. “It’s like riding a bike. I’m learning how to ride the bike right now.”

From determining how she wants to brand and present herself to the public (“I really don’t like putting heat on my hair,” she says as an aside), Infiniti is figuring it all out in real time, like everyone else. But for Hollywood’s latest starlet, the possibilities are endless.  

“I think the thing that sticks out the most in my mind is I would love to do a play or musical. That’s still my first love of performing: singing and acting on stage,” Infiniti says. “I want to keep making movies. But, I think, outside of those two things, I’m really shifting. Now I’m like, ‘What do I want to do?’ I can dream bigger than I ever thought I could dream.”

PRODUCTION CREDITS:

PHOTOGRAPHED BY PEACE BUREAU
STYLED BY WAYMAN & MICAH FOR THE ONLY AGENCY
HAIR: COREE MORENO
MAKEUP: AMBER DREADON
NAILS: SAYO IRIE
SET DESIGN: YARA KAMALI
SET ASSISTANT: CIERA MCGREW & JEAN PAUL DANIELS
LIGHTING TECHNICIAN: NATE STURLEY
DIGITAL TECHNICIAN: FERNANDO MATAMOROS
PHOTOGRAPHY ASSISTANTS: FERNANDO MATAMOROS
PRODUCTION: PEACE BUREAU
PRODUCTION MANAGER: NIA JEAN-RAYMOND
PRODUCTION ASSISTANTS: CIERA MCGREW & JEAN PAUL DANIELS
POST PRODUCTION: SAMANTHA NANDEZ
LOCATION: DUST STUDIOS LA
SPECIAL THANKS: ESSENCE, Visuals Director, Breanna Hall
ESSENCE, Art Director, Isaiah Stewart