Chase Sui Wonders used to have ‘all the shame around' being mixed race. Now it's her ‘superpower.'

Yahoo

01-07-2025

For Chase Sui Wonders, being mixed race hasn't always been easy.
Wonders, who is half Chinese, used to struggle with her identity — and as a young Asian actress in Hollywood, self-acceptance felt unattainable.
'I had all the shame around it. I would try so hard and I would put myself on tape, but it never felt quite right,' she told Vanity Fair in June. 'It always felt like it was written for a white girl, or it was written for a full Chinese girl, or a Japanese girl who has to play a geisha during World War II or something.'
This isn't the first time Wonders has opened up about being mixed race. The 29-year-old actress is outspoken about the complexities of navigating adolescence, adulthood, and now, Hollywood as someone who is biracial.
As a kid growing up in suburban Michigan, Wonders quickly recognized that she didn't look like everyone else. Her arrival in Hollywood seemed to reinforce the feeling that she didn't belong.
'As far as I'm concerned, being Asian, the community I grew up in was really 'white', and I grew up with a single mom, who is white, so I felt like I was a white person, and it took me a while to accept or just come to terms with the fact that I don't look like everyone else and that's not bad. That was a journey of my youth,' she told Italian Reve in 2024.
Eventually, Wonders began to land roles that felt more true to herself. She nabbed her breakthrough role on HBO Max's coming-of-age drama series Generation in 2021, before starring in A24's black horror comedy Bodies Bodies Bodies in 2022.
Wonders, a Harvard graduate, currently stars on Apple TV+'s The Studio as Quinn Hackett, a junior executive at a fictional film studio in Hollywood. Hackett, Wonders told Vanity Fair, wasn't initially written as a biracial character. It was only after she landed the role that creators Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg decided to work that in. (On The Studio, white executives often look to Hackett for guidance regarding diversity.)
A special screening of The Studio presented an opportunity for Wonders to celebrate her Chinese heritage offscreen too.
For the event, Wonders opted for an archival Prada gown from the fashion house's spring 1997 collection. More than just a charming cherry red dress with a 'dreamy design,' as she told Marie Claire in March, it had elements that reminded her of a qipao, a traditional Chinese dress. 'My grandmother is going to love this dress when she sees these photos,' she said.
Next up, Wonders will star in the I Know What You Did Last Summer reboot as Ava Brucks, a role that she told Vanity Fair she was initially drawn to because of how 'all-American' she is.
'You just don't see that many people who look like me who are playing these kind of leading ingenue roles,' she said. 'It felt exciting to step into that and also give her some unique flair.'
Where there was once shame in being mixed race, Wonders now feels a sense of pride, telling the magazine, 'The thing that I originally felt very complicated about has now become sort of my superpower.'