Sex, murder, intrigue, Twitter, and cousin Greg from HBO's hit series Succession? That can mean only one thing: the Zola trailer is here, bitch.
OK, first, who's Zola?
In October of 2015, Detroit waitress A'ziah "Zola" Wells took to Twitter for what would become a viral, 148-tweet thread in which she detailed her harrowing, mostly true, and somewhat embellished road trip journey with a new friend, starting at the Hooters where they met all the way to Tampa, Florida, where the two would pole dance their way through danger and mayhem.
The Zola (A24) trailer dropped on Wednesday and it gives us a dizzying look into what may or may not happened between Detroit, Florida, and these two women who had known each other for less than 24 hours before embarking on what may or may not be a glittering fabricated road trip from hell.
“Y'all wanna hear a story about why me and this bitch here fell out???????? It's kind of long but full of suspense,” @zolamoon's initial tweet reads, which is read in the trailer's voiceover.
David Kushner, the Rolling Stone writer behind “Zola Tells All: The Real Story Behind the Greatest Stripper Saga Ever Tweeted,” described the whirlwind of tweets that followed as “Spring Breakers meets Pulp Fiction, as told by Nicki Minaj.”
The film, which premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, was first teased last August and, thanks to the latest trailer offering, we now know we only have to wait until June 30 to catch the Janicza Bravo-directed film. Bravo teamed up with playwright Jeremy O. Harris (Daddy, Slave Play) to craft the script and enlisted Taylour Paige as the titular character with Riley Keough as Stefani, the sex worker who invites Zola on the hedonistic journey.
Per IMDB, Succession's cousin Greg aka actor Nicholas Braun plays Derrek and looks virtually unrecognizable in the trailer thanks to a pencil-thin chin strap beard. And Colman Domingo (Selma, Lincoln, Ma Rainy's Black Bottom) plays X, who appears to be renamed from Z as mentioned in Zola's original Twitter thread.
Anyway, the real Zola, who rightfully claims to be the inventor of the Twitter thread as a means of storytelling, is still super active on Twitter and her content is ... pretty damn good. She blocks people and then requests $20 via CashApp to get unblocked and gives updates on the real-life characters from the thread and continues to spill all the tea on Jess aka Stefani. Oh, and apparently she's still got Detroit problems.
LMFAOOOOOOOO I hate Detroit bro.
— Zola👑 (@_zolarmoon) February 28, 2021
It shouldn’t be a smooth exit from my favorite club downtown to a whole nother country.
This exit here is why I can’t go to Canadá for 2 more years (when I never even been) & why my nigga got a year in prison ... true story https://t.co/6441gllG8Y
You can read the full thread from 2015 here. Watch the trailer below.
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