Slow Playback with .chproj in Premiere Pro

So my project has an Illustrator based character and background. The background is 1080pxx9000px, this was working before I started using the background as a puppet with interactive elements. The project works fine in Character Animator, however once in Premiere, things are so slow that I can't get it to playback. I've got a MacBook Pro with the following specs:

Radeon Pro 560X 4 GB Intel UHD Graphics 630
1536 MB 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7
32 GB 2400 MHz DDR4

and after reviewing my activity monitor, it seems like it isn't being worked hard, but I'm wondering if the programs themselves have technical limits. I'm not rendering as vectors and everything is playing back at 1/4 quality, but still I can't operate the program. I do have fairly slow Wifi, and that's the only thing I can think of that my set up is lacking, but everything is locally stored. What can I do differently?

Thanks!