“Y’all wanna hear a story?”
So began the epic Twitter thread by Aziah “Zola” Wells about her madcap adventure with a fellow exotic dancer, whom she met one night while waitressing at a Detroit Hooters. Just over five years since Wells’ purportedly true story went viral, the highly anticipated movie it inspired finally has a trailer. Zola, a breakout at least year’s Sundance Film Festival, is set to hit theaters this summer from distributor A24.
Directed by Janicza Bravo and co-written with Jeremy O. Harris, Zola stars Taylour Paige as the title character convinced one night by Riley Keough’s Stefani to road-trip down to Tampa for a weekend of partying and stripping for generous stacks of cash. “We just met yesterday, and you’re already trying to take hoe trips together?” Paige’s Zola says in the trailer.
But, as A24 puts it, “what at first seems like a glamorous trip full of ‘hoeism’ rapidly transforms into a 48-hour journey involving a nameless pimp, an idiot boyfriend, some Tampa gangsters and other unexpected adventures.” Succession’s Nicholas Braun and Colman Domingo, who appears opposite Zendaya in the recent special episode of Euphoria, also star.
“It was electric,” Bravo told Variety of her first encounter with Wells’ Twitter thread. “I could feel the blood coursing through my veins… and I thought, only a Black girl could’ve experienced that and processed it and exorcised it,” she said of Wells’ own recounting of her experience. “Only a person who is innately adept at engaging with their trauma is able to take a step away from it, retell the story and take a hold of their narrative.”
The epic quality of Wells’ storytelling has also been striking from the outset. “Black Twitter said it was ‘The Thotyssey’,” Harris told IndieWire at Sundance. “And that compared A’ziah to Homer… And so, I was like, I wanna read it like it’s Homer or Toni Morrison or Stephen King, even.” Zola will mark Harris’ first feature film; his Broadway debut Slave Play has been nominated for a record-breaking 12 Tony Awards.
Paige most recently appeared as a queer love interest opposite Viola Davis in the Oscar-nominated Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Keough was Golden Globe nominated for her performance in Starz’s The Girlfriend Experience; she is also the eldest granddaughter of Elvis and Priscilla Presley.
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