Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” drops audiences into the haze of a fallen revolutionary, Bob Ferguson, played by Leonardo DiCaprio. Ferguson, paranoid and living on the fringes of society, clings to a fragile life with his sharp-witted daughter Willa, played by Chase Infiniti in her feature debut. Their lives shatter when Bob’s long-dormant nemesis, played by Sean Penn, comes back into view.
In a press conference, Anderson and his cast emphasized that the film’s battles cut deeper than gunfire or chase scenes, touching on familial tensions. Anderson described a creative process built on discovery and trust, while DiCaprio explored the broken humanity of a father scrambling to repair old wounds. DiCaprio said this tension is what drew him to the role.
“You have an incredibly flawed protagonist and unexpected choices,” DiCaprio said. “But his real heroism is the idea that he just keeps relentlessly moving forward to protect his daughter.”
DiCaprio reflected on the collaborative nature of the set, which Anderson cultivated through workshops where actors would help develop character backstories and plot lines.
“I just felt immediately like a team and the ease of being able to work together and the malleability, the flexibility that (Anderson) creates as an ecosystem on set, the ownership that he gives us as our characters to pivot and take a left turn,” DiCaprio said. “Oftentimes with writer-directors, they’re stuck in their own head for exactly how they want a film to be, especially in a film like this, (one Anderson’s) been thinking about for 20 years.”
Anderson spent most of his career developing a reputation as one of Hollywood’s most distinctive auteurs through films including “Boogie Nights” (1997) and “There Will Be Blood” (2007). With “One Battle After Another,” Anderson said the key was letting the film evolve rather than locking it down.
“We have our premise, we have our story points, we have our characters,” Anderson said. “But there has to be room for discovery within reason. You can’t just get out there and cross your fingers that you’re going to find something.”
Teyana Taylor, actress and singer, also said Anderson’s collaborative approach to her character’s development as Perfidia made it easier to dive into the role as an actress.
“We don’t always agree with what (Perfidia will) do, but I’ve been in the space of having to be in survival mode and I know how that feels,” Taylor said. “It was easy to tap into the fact that (Anderson) was shedding light on postpartum depression, which is a very, very real thing that is not often spoken about. So I was really excited to dive into that and to shed light into that as a mother.”
