The 25-year-old actor nails the role of a lifetime opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in One Battle After Another, a full-throttle epic through the dark heart of contemporary America
Chase Infiniti was just 23 when she got the call to audition for her first movie, as a lead in the new film from PT Anderson. Her agent arranged for the pair to meet, and then, “right before she hung up, she was like, ‘Also Regina Hall and Leonardo DiCaprio are gonna be there,’” says Infiniti, laughing. “As if that wasn’t something to freak out about.” Where some might crumble at the prospect of a job interview with Hollywood royalty so early in their career, Infiniti – the name comes from Buzz Lightyear’s catchphrase, “To infinity and beyond!” – is made of stronger stuff. “I think based off of that first chemistry read, I felt like, at least for my opinion, it went very well,” she says, smiling sweetly at her own immodesty.
The read involved two scenes from the movie, one with Hall’s character, Deandra, which ended up being cut, and one with DiCaprio, who was playing her father, Bob. Anderson kept the story under wraps, telling Infiniti only that the character she was reading for, Willa, was a teenager and the film “was kind of a coming of age for her, and she was trying to find her way in the world outside of what her dad had been teaching her”. Infiniti and DiCaprio struck up an easy rapport, and a little under a year later she was playing the scene again, this time for keeps, on the set of Anderson’s most ambitious film in over a decade.
Marking the Boogie Nights director’s first collaboration with DiCaprio, One Battle After Another is a super-timely, eccentric action epic in the high Andersonian style, adapted in part from Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland. The drama unfolds in an alternate-reality America where guerilla forces fight running battles with the fascist authorities, led by Colonel Steven J Lockjaw (Sean Penn), an enthusiastic racist unable to mask his desire for Black women. Bob Ferguson (DiCaprio) is an ageing revolutionary who has spent the last decade and a half hiding from the law with his daughter, Willa, whose mum (Teyana Taylor) went missing after she was arrested for a bank robbery. Now pot-addicted and paranoid, Bob feels he’s losing Willa despite years spent trying to keep her from harm. But he’s shaken from his stupor when his worst fears come to pass, and Willa is forced to go on the run to evade capture.
For all the film’s manic, seat-of-the-pants energy – its centrepiece is a bravura escape sequence powered by Jonny Greenwood’s frazzled jazz score – its heart and soul is Bob’s relationship with Willa, as laid out in the breakfast-table scene they rehearsed at the audition. By coincidence, Infiniti performed it on her very first day on set, a moment she recalls as almost a microcosm for the film in general. “It was a wonderful place to start, with what felt like the core of the story, a father and daughter trying to reunite and find each other again,” she remembers. “It was funny, because we were in this house that only could hold, like, four or five people comfortably, so it was just me and Leo and Paul and the camera operator, but then I would look outside and see the rest of the crew were all watching. It was a very special moment, and not one I’ll forget.”
Infiniti had better get used to all eyes being on her: exuding charisma and quiet resolve, she’s a beacon of light in a film that might easily be taken for Anderson’s own mea culpa for the world his kids will inherit. (Key line: “Freedom: when you have it you don’t appreciate it, but when you miss it, poof, it’s gone.”) She holds her own fantastically in scenes with Sean Penn, who was instructed to steer clear of her in a ploy by Anderson to amp up tension. “The first time I meet Sean on screen is a pretty high intensity moment, and I was nervous at first getting to meet him, because I knew how intense he was,” she says. “I felt I had to make sure I was prepared to take anything he could throw at me, because I mean, he’s Sean Penn! He literally is a great for a reason, and has, like, a plethora of experience behind him.”
Not only did she take what Penn had to throw at her, she gave back in kind, giving him the run-around in a scene where a handcuffed Willa uses her karate training to fend off Lockjaw. It was just one of the physical demands placed on her as the film’s events force Willa into ever-tighter corners. “As soon as I read the script I knew I would kill to play her in any shape or form,” says Infiniti, reflecting on her character’s fighting spirit. “Willa has been sheltered by Bob and is unaware of the things that preceded her. But she was born into this battle and she is ready for it, even if she didn’t know in the moment if she was.”
One Battle After Another is out in UK cinemas from September 26.
