“This looks crazy that that’s in the background, sorry,” Chase Infiniti says as she sits in front of a “One Battle After Another” poster featuring herself.
She’s trying to find a place in her Los Angeles home to prop up her phone for our Zoom interview on an April afternoon, and she’s had to settle for a spot that immediately recalls her performance as Willa in Paul Thomas Anderson’s best picture Oscar-winner.
“It’s just going to have to stay; we’ll pretend that it’s not there,” the 26-year-old star of “The Testaments” says with an embarrassed smile.
That’s a pretty hard thing for those in Infiniti’s orbit to do these days, as her critical acclaim and popularity has only increased since her breakout role in “Battle” last year.
But when she was filming Hulu’s adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s sequel to “The Handmaid’s Tale” last spring, Infiniti was able to maintain a level of normalcy around her peers. She’d done some theater and counted Apple TV’s “Presumed Innocent” as her one previous screen credit. And then “One Battle” began its marketing campaign.
“I hadn’t even seen the final cut yet. And I didn’t tell anybody that I was in the movie until the trailer started to play before ‘Sinners’ at the movie theater and then Brad [Alexander, her co-star] came to set and told everybody that I was in a Paul Thomas Anderson movie,” Infiniti says with a chuckle.
It’s rich that the one who broke Infiniti’s cover among “The Testaments” cast was Alexander, who plays Garth, a secret operative for the Mayday resistance in Gilead, and a sworn protector of Infiniti’s Agnes MacKenzie, the daughter of one of the highest-ranking commanders in the authoritarian government that has taken over the U.S.
Luckily, the hype around Infiniti’s theatrical debut didn’t mess with the accidental method acting occurring on set, where the largely female cast of “The Testaments” was becoming fast friends. (If anything, Infiniti says the group — herself included — were most starstruck by Rowan Blanchard, as they’d all grown up watching her on Disney’s “Girl Meets World.”)
“The Testaments,” which picks up roughly four years after where “The Handmaid’s Tale” left off, follows Infiniti’s Agnes and her friends Becka (Mattea Conforti), Hulda (Isolde Ardies) and Shunammite (Blanchard), who are the daughters of commanders and other high-profile families in Gilead. The teenagers (referred to as “plums,” or “greens,” if they’ve already gotten their periods) are trained at a wife school run by Ann Dowd’s Aunt Lydia. But amid all the oppressive government’s inculcation in the name of plummeting birthrates, girls will be girls.
Dan Doperalski for Variety
“That was something we wanted to be very mindful of, because we knew that the show was going to have a younger perspective, simply because of who this story was following,” Infiniti says. “[What] I really loved about the first two episodes that I read when I was signing on was the amount of love that Agnes has for her friends, and how close-knit that friend group is. We wanted to show that it doesn’t matter where you grew up, or how you grew up; friendships are universal and stand the test of culture and upbringing.”
Perhaps the most important relationship for Agnes throughout the course of Season 1 is her newest: the one with Lucy Halliday’s Daisy, a “pearl girl” who has seemingly sought refuge in Gilead after a life of wickedness in Canada. Agnes is tasked with being her keeper, and is completely unaware that Daisy’s on a mission from a top Mayday rebel and former handmaid: Agnes’ biological mother, June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss).
This twist is anything but to viewers who watched “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which ended its six-season run in May 2025. Agnes was born Hannah, the daughter of June and Luke (O-T Fagbenle), before she was taken away from them and given to a commander and his wife in the early days of Gilead.
Moss, who is an executive producer on “The Testaments” and guest stars in some episodes, had a major hand in Infiniti’s casting. Post-audition, she continued to be impressed with Infiniti’s performance throughout the season, especially during the finale, when Agnes discusses her mother’s identity with Aunt Lydia.
“There are a lot of scenes that are perhaps bigger, more emotional and more dramatic, but to me, that scene between her and Ann is some of the best work I’ve ever seen Chase do,” Moss says. “The way that she walks that line of not revealing anything to Lydia, but revealing what she knows, but not — it’s so, excuse my French, fucking brilliant. Then to see her find that part of her that is her mother’s daughter, but then keep a lid on it — just simmering like a boiling pot — is one of the most brilliant moments I’ve seen from her, and from the season.”
While Infiniti didn’t work with Moss onscreen this season, she previously worked with “The Handmaid’s Tale’s” Fagbenle on “Presumed Innocent”; Fagbenle also advised “Testaments” creator Bruce Miller on Infiniti’s casting.
Dan Doperalski for Variety
“We got pretty close,” Infiniti says. “I remember when I first met him, he was asking if I had ever seen ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ because at the time, I was very familiar with it, but I hadn’t sat down and watched the episodes yet. And he was like, ‘I think it might be too dark for you to watch.’”
Though the Emmy-winning “The Handmaid’s Tale” was a hard watch for many, “The Testaments” is very much a lighter look at life in the normally bleak Gilead.
“You see the blanket of beauty that they’ve draped over these girls’ world. It makes it more palatable for them,” Infiniti says. “So, it seems like, Oh, my gosh, you’re so lucky that you’re getting all of these wonderful things happening to you! But in reality, they’re still just as dark and terrifying. They’re just tied up with a bow, and they look prettier.”
Between tea parties, dances and a courting process with much older men, Agnes faces sexual assault at the hands of her best friend Becka’s father, Dr. Grove (Randal Edwards). While “The Handmaid’s Tale” dealt with the subject matter of rape in nearly every episode, and often in graphic detail, Infiniti says that’s not what Miller and his writing team wanted for “The Testaments.”
“If you’ve read the scenes with Dr. Grove in the book, it is very disturbing, extremely graphic, and it just really breaks your heart,” Infiniti says. “They decided very early on that the things you see in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ are very jarring. And I think that, especially with Agnes and Dr. Grove, she doesn’t even know what happens to her. So, in not showing a lot to the audience, it kind of gave that same feel.”
Infiniti had the challenge of playing these very intense moments juxtaposed with bits of teenage normalcy, like when Agnes finds out her best friend is being forced to marry Agnes’ own crush, guardian-turned-commander Garth.
“She’s a 14-year-old girl who’s jealous that her crush isn’t with her,” Infiniti says. “At its core, regardless of the rules and everything in Gilead, that’s just another part of being a young teenager that just bleeds through. Even though the system is the way that it is, her body’s changing, and she’s figuring out what she feels, her emotions and the intensity of it all at once, while dealing with the craziness of finding a husband in Gilead.”
When Agnes is faced with the reality of not being able to marry her preferred (and much more age-appropriate) match Garth, Aunt Lydia gives her Commander Westin (Reed Diamond), the top pick among this year’s eligible old bachelors, as her consolation prize. It’s then that Agnes’ defiant nature begins to rise up.
“I definitely think that it’s a bit of June coming through her,” Infiniti says. “But also, she has grown up in Gilead. She knows the rules of Gilead so well that she can navigate through them easier than anybody just coming in would. She knows the limitations. She knows how far she can push it before she actually, really gets in trouble.”
Though June is an inherent part of Agnes, Infiniti had to be careful not to unravel that thread too quickly and get ahead of Agnes’ own revelation about her real identity.
“When I first started preparing for the role, I went back and rewatched ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’” says Infiniti. “But I also really wanted to make an effort to not rely on that too much, because ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ is told from the perspective of somebody who has lost everything.”
Hulu renewed “The Testaments” for a second season on May 20, one week before the Season 1 finale dropped. When I spoke with Infiniti in April, she didn’t yet know the show’s fate, or what she wanted to do next. She’s in post-production on Niki Byrne’s upcoming film, “The Julia Set,” in which she stars alongside Gillian Anderson and Christopher Briney.
“I’m still trying to find something that I feel inspired by, or something that gives me those butterflies that I get when I find something that’s special,” Infiniti says. “I’m somebody who believes [that] the things that are meant to happen will happen. If this is the universe telling me I need a break, then I will listen to the universe in that way, too. But I am using the advantage I have now with time to be specific about what I want to do next, and it can be literally anything and everything.”
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