Chase Sui Wonders’s Big Acting Debut in 2020
From V123’s V People, Chase talks projects with Lena Dunham, Sofia Coppola and more.
Chase Sui Wonders’s trio of upcoming projects reads like a reel of future 2020 alt-hits: There’s On the Rocks, written and directed by Sofia Coppola, an untitled Judd Apatow/Pete Davidson film, and the Lena Dunham-produced HBO Max pilot Generation.
With these masters of humanistic storytelling in her corner, Sui Wonders is poised to have a net-positive impact on pop culture.“I try to create as much as possible and absorb as much culture as possible,” she says. “It feels like such a crazy divisive time, and everything just hits you like an explosion. So the unifying [potential] of cultural output is really inspiring to me.”
If her hectic filming schedule is any indication, chaos can be part of the actress’s process. Such is true of Sui Wonders’s near-miss path to landing the part on Generation, a lighthearted but realist take on teen life today co-created by 18-year-old Zelda Barnz.“This is a crazy story,” she says. “But I was filming a skateboarding show on the Williamsburg Bridge and I completely ate it. I’m down and out, and then I had an allergic reaction to hazelnuts and had to go to the hospital—and that was when I got the callback from the director…It was fate!”
While Sui Wonders’s upbringing in Detroit was not always so action-packed, it was not without its moments of thrall, in large part courtesy of her famous aunt, the designer Anna Sui. Relation to fashion royalty meant periodic trips to New York Fashion Week, which Sui Wonders recalls as “inspiring.” Further inspiration awaited at Harvard, where she studied under auteurs like Guy Maddin (The Saddest Music in the World).“It was very special,” she says of the school’s film program.“Like a little gem cave.”
But to equate Sui Wonders’s Ivy League and high-fashion pedigree with any sort of snobbish cultural bias would be a false move. Though she’s an unapologetic arthouse buff (and a regular at New York’s indie-leaning Metrograph theater) there’s a clear winner when it comes to the question of Sui Wonders’s most-watched film: “Die Hard!” she responds, without missing a beat.
Read about more of V123’s V People—print issues are available now for purchase.
