How Chase Sui Wonders Became Gen Z’s Scream Queen

Growing up, Chase Sui Wonders wouldn’t be caught dead at a slasher movie. “I always stayed far away. If I was watching that with my friends at a sleepover, I would have to go home, and it would be very embarrassing,” she says.

In 2022, she starred in the horror comedy Bodies Bodies Bodies—and something changed. “I saw how the sausage was made, and suddenly I was no longer afraid of horror movies. Now I can watch them all the time.”

Which is a good thing, because the actor is starring in another one out July 18. In I Know What You Did Last Summer, a reboot of the ’90s classic, a recent group of friends is terrorized by a stalker after they cover up a deadly accident. Though Sui Wonders was too much of a scaredy-cat to grow up with the 1997 original, she did worship its stars: She watched Jennifer Love Hewitt’s 2001 crime comedy Heartbreakers over and over, and 2002’s Scooby-Doo, starring Freddie Prinze Jr. and Sarah Michelle Gellar, is “one of the most scratched-up DVDs in my basement at home,” she says.

Hewitt and Prinze reprise their roles in the recent sequel, making Sui Wonders’s teenage dreams come true. “They were so welcoming. They were so willing to hang,” she says. So was Prinze’s wife, Gellar, whose character was memorably slaughtered in the first film. The Buffy star also came to the shoot and “shared so many kernels of wisdom about the industry, about life, about love. Gave me boy advice.”

Sui Wonders has been surrounded by her idols a lot lately. She plays ambitious newbie studio executive Quinn Hackett in Apple TV+’s hit comedy series The Studio, a part she nabbed after auditioning for Seth Rogen—who startled Sui Wonders by asking her to improvise in their first meeting. “In that moment, my heart sank into my gut,” she says. “It went on for what felt like 10 minutes, and then he lit up a joint and said ‘Great work.’ I thought that was either the worst sign ever, or I got the part.”

The role allowed her to perform wild comedy opposite veterans like Ike Barinholtz, Kathryn Hahn, and Catherine O’Hara, along with Rogen. It was a recent experience, and one that has her craving more. “The Studio and Quinn has helped me unlock a part of myself that is kind of just unabashed,” she says. “I just want to play complicated characters—interesting women who are one degree off, women who are just unafraid to be crazy or weird or ugly.”

Sui Wonders, a self-proclaimed tomboy who “wore the same thing every day and played ice hockey” as a kid, says she didn’t have any friends in elementary school. But that didn’t bother her because she was best friends with her three siblings. Growing up in the suburbs of Detroit, they’d watch movies, do impressions of their favorite characters, and make their own films. (Creativity runs in the family: Her aunt is the designer Anna Sui.) By the time she was in high school, they were writing scripts and casting neighbors in feature-length movies. But she didn’t plan to pursue filmmaking or acting when she was accepted to Harvard. “I don’t think I ever thought that it would be a realistic career option,” she says. “My plan was to study astrophysics. I was like, ‘This is what people go to Harvard to do.’”

That changed after she met other students whose parents worked in the industry. “I just needed to pivot away from astrophysics—I was failing,” she says. She majored in film studies and production, wrote for The Harvard Lampoon, made a few miniature films, and got an agent, thanks to aid from a friend working in the agency’s mail room. Even then, Sui Wonders wasn’t sure she’d make it. “I was seriously flirting with this idea that I would just say goodbye to it all and just become a corporate drone in Beijing,” she says.

Then she wrote another script and booked a role on the HBO Max show Generation—a graphic series about high schoolers exploring sexuality and identity. While filming that, she landed the role in Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, a breakout horror comedy hit with a cast that included rising stars Amandla Stenberg, Maria Bakalova, and Rachel Sennott. “I’m very much a believer in momentum. There’s just an extra layer of confidence you have when you’re already on a film set that can propel you to the next job,” she says.

Clothing by Chanel; sandals by Giuseppe Zanotti; pendant necklace by L’Enchanteur; bracelets by Cartier. Throughout: hair products by Oribe; makeup products by Bobbi Brown; nail enamel by V Beauty Pure.Photograph by Nick Riley Bentham; styled by Nicole Chapoteau.