Zola’s Journey, As Told By Taylour Paige, Riley Keough, And More

By Alex Gonzalez

On a fateful weekend in 2015, A’Ziah “Zola” King launched into a journey that will change her life. What was meant to be a fast journey from Detroit to Tampa, Florida to make some further money was a downward spiral of visits from unusual males, pimping, stripping, and fallouts. In October of that yr, King shared the story in a collection of 148 tweets, pioneering the Twitter thread storytelling format and receiving worldwide consideration.

This Wednesday (June 30), the long-lasting #ZolaStory involves life on the large display screen as Zola, a movie virtually six years within the making. Whereas King herself has admitted that some parts of the original Twitter story are embellished, she says writer-director Janicza Bravo managed to seize the story King wished to inform.

“Each tweet is in there,” King tells MTV Information of the movie co-written by Bravo and Slave Play’s Jeremy O. Harris. “Janizca and I bought shut all through the method. There’s really a scene that isn’t within the tweets. So I’d say it’s about 110 p.c correct.”

Earlier than King determined to share the tweets, she debated revealing the soiled particulars of the highway journey gone fallacious for months. However “about six months later,” she discovered herself scrolling via her cellphone and got here throughout photos of her and Jessica, the man stripper with whom she went on the trek. The images introduced again painful recollections, and so she determined to spill all of the tea.

However part of the story offered within the movie that didn’t make the unique tweet thread takes place in a lodge room, after Jessica’s on-screen counterpart Stefani (Riley Keough), takes an outcall and encounters a bunch of males. King says Bravo made the scene look “so fairly,” with higher lighting in a cleaner dwelling setting, however in actual life, King says this a part of the journey was “fucking traumatizing.”

“It was horrible,” King says. “However within the movie, it is very aesthetically pleasing, not like what I really skilled. In actual life, once they made a name, we set the worth, we talked to them, all the things was good. After we bought there, everybody acted like they could not communicate English, like abruptly, whoever we had been on the cellphone with does not exist. And nobody gave us any cash.”

At present, King is a mom of a 3-year-old daughter. She enjoys making artwork, writing, singing, rapping, modeling, and creating “wherever I really feel impressed.” She sometimes makes posts on her OnlyFans web page and nonetheless maintains the identical confidence she possessed throughout her dancing days.

When she first shared the Twitter story, she obtained consideration from the likes of Missy Elliott, Solange, and Ava Duvernay; the latter responded to the story, saying there’s “a lot untapped expertise within the hood.” However King reiterates that intercourse work is a job like every other.

“I don’t know the place [Duvernay] bought that from,” King says. “I hold saying that intercourse work is not black and white. It isn’t like a technique or this manner. Most intercourse employees I do know are doing what they’re doing by selection and since they’re simply assured of their sexuality and it is a method to generate income.”

Though Taylour Paige, who performs King within the Zola movie, had by no means stripped earlier than touchdown the titular function, she has constructed fairly a formidable resume as a dancer. The actress has taken courses on the Kirov Academy of Ballet in Washington, D.C. and labored underneath superstar choreographer Debbie Allen. She has additionally appeared in music movies for Usher and was a backup dancer in Excessive College Musical 3.

However the function posed new challenges for Paige, who ready by working undercover at a strip membership for 4 weeks earlier than the movie started manufacturing.

Riley Keough, left, as Stefani, and Taylour Paige in Zola.

“I feel like a dancer,” Paige says. “Typically, my job is to undo the unhealthy perfectionism and obsessive-compulsive placement and technicality. I can see with my very own eyes, like, ‘That appears too positioned,’ or ‘It appears to be like too privileged on the pole,’ and that is not the story we’re telling. It is extra unfastened within the motion. It is a Black lady shaking her ass, going across the pole. It is totally different from me on the ballet bar.”

Whereas Keough remembers studying the entire story in a single sitting shortly after King tweeted it, Paige wasn’t lively on Twitter on the time. Nonetheless, she was drawn to the function as a result of she wished to do one thing outdoors her consolation zone.

Throughout manufacturing, Paige chatted with King through FaceTime and textual content, attending to know her all through each step of the best way. Holding in fixed communication with King and her household helped Paige channel the web icon. “Her mother would message me, like, ‘We’re so pleased and we have been praying so that you can [get] the half,’ and I simply felt so supported,” Paige says.

Keough didn’t get to satisfy Jessica, the inspiration for Stefani, however she labored with a dialect coach to excellent Stefani’s exaggerated accent. Previous to manufacturing, Keough recorded herself talking her strains as Stefani and despatched voice notes to Bravo, who instructed Keough to crank it up “to 100.” As manufacturing drew close to, Keough practiced the Stefani voice in massive public settings.

“My coach wished me to go to the swap meet and speak in my accent,” Keough says. “I used to be actually uncomfortable doing that, however she was like, ‘You understand what, that is what you are going to do.’ And so I simply adopted her lead, and we went to the swap meet.”

Keough beforehand performed a stripper in Magic Mike and an escort within the Starz anthology collection The Girlfriend Expertise. With these roles, together with Zola’s Stefani, she discovered that intercourse work is nuanced and hopes the viewers takes away the identical message.

“You wish to humanize folks, do away with judgment and convey empathy and understanding,” Keough says, “and simply get a bit little bit of perception into lives which can be very totally different from yours and stroll away from it with extra info.”

After years of speaking with King and her household from afar, Paige lastly met King in particular person at Zola’s Sundance premiere in January 2020. Through the years, King assured Paige she was proper for the title function, however Paige’s nerves had been in overdrive up till the top credit.

“When [King] noticed the film, she actually texted me, like, ‘Bitch, you probably did that,’” Paige says. “And Jeremy was together with her, and he was like, ‘She full-on cried,’ and I used to be like, ‘Huh, OK, I can chill out my butthole now.’”

Zola was filmed virtually three years in the past and initially slated for launch final yr, nevertheless it was pushed again attributable to COVID-19. On the time the interviews for this story had been accomplished, Mercury was in retrograde, and whereas many astrologers suggest not going via any main life occasions, King — a self-described curator of “acutely aware content material,” in line with her Twitter web page — feels the premiere couldn’t be extra well timed.

“This second has been anticipated for therefore lengthy,” King says. “Now, I can lastly take a deep breath. It simply is sensible. Divine timing and intervention is right here.”