The real story behind 'Zola': How a jaw-dropping Twitter thread turned into an even crazier film

Where were you in 2015 when #TheStory hit the internet?

Some may remember exactly what they were doing when A'Ziah "Zola" King's chaotic and creative series of tweets surfaced. Before official Twitter threads even existed, she spun a 148-tweet tale "full of suspense" about a trip to Florida with a girl named Jessica gone horribly wrong.

"I was waitressing at that point. I had kind of stopped dancing for a minute," says King, who worked as a Hooters waitress and sometimes moonlighted as a dancer at strip clubs when the events of the tweets took place.

"I was going through pictures on my phone that day, and I came across a picture of us at the club," King, 26, says via Zoom, decked out in a blue-and-white polka-dotted outfit, a veiled white fascinator and a Cuban link chain. "It kind of triggered and inspired me in a way to want to tell that experience on Twitter."

King's tweets (and a subsequent Rolling Stone article about her life) are the basis of "Zola" (in theaters now).

Like the Twitter thread, there's comedy, sex work, stripping, violence and quotable moments galore in the film, directed by Janicza Bravo and starring Taylour Paige ("Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom") in the title role, with Riley Keough ("Logan Lucky") as Stefani (Jessica's name in the film).

"Succession" star Nicholas Braun and Paige's "Ma Rainey" co-star Colman Domingo round out the cast as Stefani's boyfriend Derrek and her "roommate" X ("Jarrett" and "Z" in the tweets) in the raunchy romp, which follows the foursome on a wild 48-hour road trip to Tampa, Florida. Stefani lures Zola from Detroit under the guise of raking in big cash by stripping for the weekend.

The women take center stage with their tenacity in moving forward, the way they look out for each other and how they create humor out of terror – in the movie and the real-life story.

Review: 'Zola' successfully brings a crazy Twitter stripper saga to clever big-screen life

Though Paige didn't experience the Twitter frenzy in real time, Keough remembers the moment "in my apartment (when) my friend sent it to me."

"I obviously, like the rest of the world, couldn't put it down," says Keough, 32. "Her voice and storytelling was so compelling, which is why it went viral."

The movie could have turned out entirely differently: James Franco, who has agreed to pay $2.2 million to settle a sexual misconduct suit filed by his former acting students, was originally tapped to direct before bowing out. Paige, who auditioned for the original iteration, calls that script "really sexist and racist."

"That's why I say I think Black creatives should work with Black creatives, and Black people should share Black stories from our Black points of view," King says. "I was getting drowned out."

Bravo entered the picture in 2017 and overhauled the script and focus of the film, co-writing the screenplay with "Slave Play" playwright Jeremy O. Harris.

Though King always had a seat at the table for the film adaptation, Bravo pushed for King to be properly compensated, to have her source material acknowledged and to receive an executive producer credit.

"It would be so unfortunate to look like me, make this film that is written by someone who also looks like me, starring someone who also looks like me, and not to advocate and give credit where credit is due," Bravo says.

The director had already seen more than 700 actors for the lead role but flagged Paige to the casting director after running into her at a coffee shop. Paige auditioned again and scored the part with King's blessing (King calls Paige her "soul sister").

"So many things aligned," says Paige, 30.

The antics of the movie, infused with timely commentary on cultural appropriation and race, turn dangerous when Zola discovers X is really Stefani's pimp and he wants them to "trap," with the expectation they'll both perform sex work and give him the earnings, which Zola refuses to participate in.

The film walks a "fine line" in depicting sex work, King says. "It's not all glamorous: It's not like I'm an escort for politicians and police officers, but I'm also not 'Pretty Woman' with my thigh out on the curb. It's real sex work."

Paige reveals she danced for weeks at the strip club Crazy Girls off of Los Angeles' legendary Sunset Boulevard, in part as preparation for the role and in part because of where she was in her life.

"I was really down on my luck and was like 'I don't know if this is ever going to happen,' " Paige says.

Paige, a professionally trained dancer who studied under Debbie Allen, says she "grew up as a dancer, but I didn't want to look like a trained dancer, so I actually worked at a strip club for almost four weeks." She wanted to go by "Lola," but the club told her they had too many Lolas, so "I went by Zo and I found my people in the club."

"I think a collection of all my experiences walking through the world as a Black woman prepared me for this trip to hell" in the movie.

The womanly grit and fellowship shine through, including a poignant and darkly comedic scene where Zola works as a madam as Stefani services a revolving door of johns.

Paige sums up the scene – and the movie's true story – succinctly.

"So many things are ridiculous in the real world, just outrageous," she says. "When you really think about it, after you've processed how traumatic it is, it's almost sickly funny."

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Zola' movie stars Riley Keough, Taylour Paige talk tweets, stripping