Director Janicza Bravo, writer Jeremy O. Harris & Aziah ‘Zola’ Wells talk ‘Zola’
Coming out this week is Janicza Bravo’s film, Zola, starring Taylour Paige, Riley Keough, Nicholas Braun, Jason Mitchell, Ari'el Stachel and Colman Domingo.
The film had its world premiere at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.
Zola is based on a Rolling Stones article titled, Zola Tells All: The Real Story Behind the Greatest Stripper Saga Ever Tweeted by David Kushner. In 2015, Aziah ‘Zola’ Wells sent out a series of tweets that detailed a wild 2-day Flordia trip with a sex worker named Jessica, her boyfriend Jarrett, and Jessica’s violent pimp, who went by X.
Co-written by Bravo and Jeremy O. Harris, the film is set in 2015 where Zola (Taylour Paige), a Detroit waitress, strikes up a new friendship with a customer, Stefani (Riley Keough). Stefani seduces her to join a weekend of dancing and partying in Florida. What at first seems like a glamorous trip full of “hoeism” rapidly transforms into a 48-hour journey involving a nameless pimp, an idiot boyfriend, some Tampa gangsters and other unexpected adventures in this wild, see-it-to-believe-it tale.
Bravo is an award-winning director whose 2013 dark comedy named Gregory Go Boom, won the short-film jury award at the Sundance Film Festival. Since then she’s done other short forms before directing her first feature, an independent film called Lemon. She also directed the season 1 episode 9, "Juneteenth", of FX award-winning television show Atlanta, an episode on FX’s Mrs. America and four episodes from Season 4 of HBO’s In Treatment.
Harris is best known as the playwright to Slave Play, which received 12 nominations at the 74th Tony Awards, breaking the record previously set by the 2018 revival of Angels in America for most nominations for a non-musical play. Harris is also an actor who has appeared in episodes of FX’s What We Do In The Shadows and the Showtime series ZIWE
BlackFilmandTV.com correspondent Sidnee Michelle spoke with Bravo, Harris and Aziah ‘Zola’ Wells about the film and the transition from social media to screenplay to film.