LOS ANGELES, USA
Y’all wanna hear a story about how me and this bitch fell out?
So goes the first in a thread of 148 tweets by Aziah ‘Zola’ King, a rollercoaster ride of a story involving strippers, sex trafficking, extortion and guns that went viral in 2015. King, who tweets as @_Zolarmoon, was a 20-year-old waitress working at Hooters. The thread caught fire on Black Twitter and her follower count ballooned. Within three days, Solange had shared it. A line of t-shirts emblazoned with Zola’s catchphrase, #HOEISM, was launched. The film rights were optioned. Bizarre, thrilling and darkly funny, Zola’s hyperlocal experience was seen for its global potential. The rapper Missy Elliot described reading the thread as like “watching a movie on Twitter”.
The story was turned into a longform profile in , and is now a feature film directed by Janicza Bravo, co-written by Jeremy O Harris and distributed by A24. In the movie, Riley Keough plays Stefani (based on the character Jessica from the thread), a tricksy blonde sex worker who befriends Taylour Paige’s Zola, taking her on an ill-advised road trip to Tampa, Florida. An opportunity to make some fast cash at a strip club quickly takes a dangerous turn.
