Columbia Alum Chase Infiniti ’22 Stars With Leonardo DiCaprio in New Paul Thomas Anderson Film
Chase Infiniti as Willa Ferguson in “One Battle After Another.” A Warner Bros. Pictures Release. Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.
Chase Infiniti '22. Photo by Stefanie Frontera. 
Chase Infiniti as Willa Ferguson in “One Battle After Another.” A Warner Bros. Pictures Release. Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.
Chase Infiniti as Willa Ferguson and Regina Hall as Deandra in “One Battle After Another.” A Warner Bros. Pictures Release. Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.vlogٷapp alum Chase Infiniti ’22 has landed the kind of role that can define a career. She stars opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “ ,” in theatres on September 26. Anderson has called her character “the heart of the film,” placing the young alum at the center of one of Hollywood’s most anticipated projects.
The epic drama, loosely inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel “Vineland,” follows Bob Ferguson (DiCaprio), a former revolutionary whose daughter Willa goes missing while they’re pursued by a vengeful military leader, played by Sean Penn. Infiniti plays Willa, whose resilience and search for independence drive the story forward.
It’s the latest in a string of breakout opportunities for Infiniti, who made her television debut as Jaden Sabich in Apple TV+’s “Presumed Innocent” (2024), starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Ruth Negga, and recently wrapped filming as Agnes in Hulu’s “The Testaments,” the sequel series to “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
The role in “One Battle After Another” came after a lengthy audition process. Months after sending in her tape, she got a callback. “Right before the casting director hung up, she said, ‘Also, Leonardo DiCaprio and Regina Hall are going to be there, so it’s a chemistry read,’” Infiniti recalls. “I was like, cool, great, don’t need to freak out about that at all.”
After several rounds of chemistry reads and camera tests, and more delays due to union strikes, Anderson himself gave her the news. “Paul very nonchalantly told me I booked the job,” she says. “And I was like, wait a minute—you just told me I booked my first movie and you’re already talking shop about the next steps!”
Even after filming wrapped, the significance of the project didn’t fully hit her until she saw it on the big screen. “Watching it on an IMAX screen was the moment I thought, ‘My God, I didn’t realize the scope of what I had just done,’” she says.
Columbia Roots
Infiniti earned her BFA in Musical Theatre and credits the Columbia faculty members who helped shape her path. “It was really two professors that stuck with me,” she says. “(Former faculty member) Justin Brill was one of the first professors who really helped empower me in my craft. He opened my world of coloring a character in ways that I had never imagined. And Wendi Weber was the first person to pull me aside and say, ‘I really think that you could act on camera.’ That was something I had never thought of before.”
Weber, now an associate professor of instruction in the School of Theatre and Dance , says the pandemic years gave Infiniti an unexpected gift. “She was in two of my acting classes during COVID, one fully on Zoom and one hybrid with self-tapes, masks, and distancing. For Chase, who was training in musical theatre, getting to explore such an emotionally complicated world on-camera was a real gift to her creative process and presence.”
Infiniti also remembers Columbia as a community that broadened her perspective. “Meeting people from every walk of life was a highlight,” she says. “My classes were incredibly diverse in culture, race, ethnicity, age, and stories, and that variety shaped my experience.”
To students following in her footsteps, she offers simple advice: “Try everything. Meet everyone that you can and just enjoy college. I didn’t realize how fast it would fly by.”
Next up, Infiniti will appear in Hulu’s “The Testaments,” continuing her streak of high-profile roles. For Weber, the success feels especially rewarding. “Chase trusts the camera. Her interior life makes people lean in, and she inhabits a role rather than performing it,” she says. “I am so proud that she has made this leap into the Hollywood world, and I can’t wait to see her work on the big screen.”
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