We may have grown up in the same place, but Wonders would’ve been the senior girl I was too intimidated to approach. Not only did she attend the town’s elite private school, she’s also the niece of legendary punk designer Anna Sui, and did what she describes as “every activity under the sun” — gymnastics, ice hockey, golf, diving, and classes at the art center. In her spare time, she remembers inhaling comedies like Austin Powers and The Bee Movie and making parodies with her siblings.

“My dad would bring us home a stack of DVDs from the five-dollar bin,” she says. “We didn’t really watch cable; every weekend it was movies.”

When she graduated from high school, she went on to Harvard, where she wrote for the storied satirical magazine The Harvard Lampoon, whose alumni include Colin Jost, Conan O’Brien, and BJ Novak. “School was super cutthroat,” she says. “I do think it emulates Hollywood in some ways, where people have power kind of arbitrarily, and they have really big egos, and there are so many social mores you have to learn by osmosis.”

She intended to study science before realizing she had little to no interest in the subject. “I was like, if I’m here, this is the thing to do,’” she says. “And then I took Intro to Astrophysics, and it was the hardest thing I’d ever done. I was in the library and I was like, ‘I can’t do this. This is clearly not me. I’m going to fail.’”

Michigan is home to plenty of creative heavyweights, yet the Big Three — General Motors, Ford and Chrysler — still take precedence as far as jobs go. Film “wasn’t a profession,” Wonders says. “That was not something people did.”

Even as she rejiggered her major, Wonders thought of film as a passion rather than a viable career. The people she met in her new program helped change her mind. She describes the Japanese cinema course she took and the visiting directors like indie filmmaker Guy Maddin who inspired her. “At the end of four years of college, I was like, I can go out into the world and crush,” she says.

That cockiness was punctured by the working world and a year and a half stringing odd jobs together. Then, in August 2017, Wonders’ best friend Hannah, who was interning at United Talent Agency at the time, decided to pull a Hail Mary. At the end of her internship, she sent a two-page email about Chase to UTA’s partner and their assistant. “It was touch-and-go whether the partner, let alone her assistant, would set eyes on this email,” Wonders says. “But they saw it, and then responded, ‘Anyone who inspires you to write a two-page email is probably worthy of a meeting.’ So they took a meeting with me.”

Hannah is “a real one,” Wonders says. “Best friend to this day.”

Three months later, Wonders landed the role of Riley, a budding photographer and full-time sad girl, on HBO’s Generation. From there, the snowball started to roll.

“Breaking in is definitely the hardest thing,” Wonders says. “Once you’re in, there’s a whole other set of challenges that you didn’t foresee. But I think getting your foot in the door is meant to be a challenge.”

Wonders’ impressed her Studio cast mates: A-list comedy talent like Rogen, Hahn, and Catherine O’Hara. “Chase would stop by set on days she wasn’t shooting,” Rogen said. “To me it spoke volumes about her work ethic and enthusiasm.”

For Wonders, the show has been a dizzying experience. “You see people at parties from across the room, and that’s its own sort of fever dream,” she says. “But getting to collaborate with these people is a different experience. There’s a leveling effect to this show where everyone is making fun of themselves and trying to be funny and acting like an idiot. That part has been really special.”

It’s an interesting line to walk: holding up a mirror to the film industry while being entrenched in it in real life. Wonders’ character recognizes Hollywood’s messy inner workings, but she’s still motivated to make meaningful art.

“I think I’m more optimistic than Quinn,” Wonders says. “Maybe it’s delusional, but I’m very much hungry for everything that this industry — and this life — has to offer.” 

Maybe it is a little bit delusional. Maybe it’s those Midwestern rose-colored glasses. But for now, the world seems to be rising up to meet Wonders. She’s already tried directing and screenwriting, including on a short film for Vogue China, and she’s keen to take on more projects where she can stretch herself creatively. “Acting is so much about relinquishing control and surrendering to a greater vision, and I think it's nice to be in the driver's seat,” she says. She’s working on something about our hometown. For now she’ll only say that it’s funny, and that it’s very much under wraps.

Learning to see herself as an actor has also been part of Wonders’ journey. Early-on in her career, being in certain audition rooms felt ill-fitting, like trying to squeeze a Christmas ham into a pair of pantyhose. “It was like, play this all-American girl that you’re the only woman of color auditioning for, or play this geisha, and you don’t really fit that either,” she says. “There was kind of nowhere in between.” 

When I ask Wonders if she thinks the Wasian agenda is currently up (data points: Charles Melton, Lola Tung, Olivia Rodrigo, and Havana Rose Liu, among others), she laughs. “There’s a squad,” she says. Part of the fun of playing Quinn, for her, is getting to satirize the way identity politics is spoken about in the workplace — “the corporatization of all these very complex issues and how people are trying to wrestle with the white guilt of it all.”

The fact is that all of it — the loneliness, the racism, the sexism, the corporate bureaucracy — has fed poems about cut fruit and pensive art about being stuck between two places. But it can also be incredibly funny. She recalls a recent text message from a random man attempting to flirt with her: Hey, I'm walking to Chinatown right now. Do you have any recs since you’re part Chinese?

Wonders is basically on the wave of: What can you do but laugh?

If anything, she’d like to be remembered as an actor who played all different types of complex women — “women who are all on the verge of crashing out.” Her eyes light up thinking about how many different ways there are to spiral. 

Today, she has the day off — a break from the press tour in New York, then filming in Australia before flying back to Los Angeles. Later in the day, she’ll meet friends and family for lunch. She stands up and wishes me well: “hometown girl,” she says kindly before turning and walking through the golden café doors.