What to Know About the True Story Behind Stripper Saga 'Zola'

Y’all wanna hear a story? More than five years after A’Ziah King’s viral Twitter thread about a truly memorable trip to Florida, the film inspired by her story, Zola, finally debuted in June 2021.

The movie premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2020, but the coronavirus pandemic forced distributors to push back the wide release. Several critics who were lucky enough to catch early screenings were impressed, with Entertainment Weekly calling the movie a “wild candy-colored road saga with piles of style and postmodern flair.”

But what it’s about? As Twitter obsessives know, King, a.k.a. @_zolarmoon, famously began her 148-tweet thread in October 2015 with the line, “Y’all wanna hear a story about why me and this bitch here fell out? It’s kind of long but full of suspense.”

Then working as a waitress in Detroit, King supplemented her income by stripping and traveled to clubs in different states. During one of her shifts in March 2015, she met a woman named Jessica Swiatowski, who invited her to come with her to Florida. Swiatowski’s boyfriend and a man known only as “Z” accompanied the duo.

Though King, who also goes by Zola, believed the purpose of the trip was dancing at local clubs, things took a turn when Z suggested the women place ads offering their services as prostitutes. King wasn’t interested but decided to stay with Swiatowski so she wouldn’t be alone. The story quickly spiraled even further out of control — and allegedly culminated in a shooting.

By February 2016, Hollywood came calling. James Franco was initially attached to direct a movie inspired by King’s tweets, but he later dropped out and was replaced by Janizca Bravo in 2018. Bravo cowrote the screenplay alongside Jeremy O. Harris, the playwright whose Slave Play was nominated for 12 Tony nominations in 2020.

After Bravo took over, she made sure that credit and compensation went to King for her original tweets. The movie includes a title card that says, “Based on the tweets by A’Ziah King,” she was credited as an executive producer and she will receive 2.5 percent of the film’s profits.

“Now that I know I’m good at writing, I would love to do more movies,” King told New York magazine in 2021. “I would love to do something like a series because, like I said, I have 1,000,010 stories. You have no idea. Working in the club, I’ve seen some wild s—t. I would love to tell them all at some point.”

Keep scrolling to read more about Zola:

Who Is Zola?

King, the woman behind the tweets, moved to Atlanta in May 2020 and is a mother of two. Though she did not write the screenplay that bears her name, she did work with Bravo as it was developed. King told New York that the pair went tweet by tweet through the original thread so she could fill in details. She also provided photos from the trip. "Of course, I had them,” King said of the pictures. “I’m a blogger.”

Taylour Paige, who plays the titular Zola, worked in a strip club for four weeks to learn King's craft. “I didn’t want to look like an actor trying to dance, I didn’t want to look like a dancer trying to strip," she told The Wrap. "I wanted to look like this person in the given circumstances who works at a restaurant and also dances.”

Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP/Shutterstock (2)

Who Is Jessica?

Riley Keough plays a fictionalized version of Jessica named Stefani. In real life, Swiatowksi convinced King to come on the trip by telling her that she needed the money so she could regain custody of her daughter.

"I had never seen that type of trauma, especially not firsthand," King told VF of her former acquaintance. "I’d heard about it, I mean, girls have stories all the time. I’ve worked in clubs where we got robbed, or girls got beat up. But never have I seen that type of experience. That was a first.”

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Who Else Is in the Movie?

Colman Domingo plays X, a character seemingly inspired by King's mysterious "Z," who in reality worked as a pimp. Nicholas Braun stars as Derrek, boyfriend of Stefani. The cast also features Ts Madison, Nelcie Souffrant, Jason Mitchell and Ari'el Stachel.

Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP/Shutterstock

How Accurate Is It?

Only King can say for sure, but so far, she has given her stamp of approval to the film's version of events. “I was watching, like, 'How do I feel?'" she told New York of watching the movie for the first time. “I had to get used to someone else saying my words. I kept asking my mother, ‘Is this how I sound?’" After the second time, however, she came around, saying, “OK! I like that!”

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