Riley Keough On 'Zola' And Finding Empathy For Anti-Heroes

It's Been a Minute

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🗓️ 29 June 2021

⏱️ 23 minutes

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Summary

Sam interviews Riley Keough, one of the stars of Zola— a new movie adapted from a viral 148-tweet thread story full of sex work, guns and plot twists. They talk about how Riley prepared her character's "blaccent," why she tends to play unlikeable characters, and how she became a death doula.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	In 2015, a woman named Zola wrote a 148-tweet storm.
0:06.1	It was unlike anything I'd ever read on Twitter before.
0:09.0	It began with these words.
0:10.4	Y'all wanna hear a story about why me and this B-word here fell out?
0:14.5	It's kinda long, but full of suspense.
0:18.1	This was a story about strippers and sex work and maybe human trafficking, but also it was
0:23.4	really, really funny.
0:24.4	And it had a lot of plot and twists and turns and heroes and villains.
0:29.9	It was cinematic.
0:30.9	Flash forward to now, and Zola is a feature film.
0:35.4	You wanna hear a story about how me and this B-tch fell out?
0:37.9	It's kinda long, but it's full of suspense.
0:42.4	So in this tweet storm, now movie, Zola is this waitress in Detroit.
0:47.2	An exotic dancer named Stephanie comes into her restaurant.
0:50.6	They hit it off and Stephanie convinces Zola to go down to Florida for a weekend of stripping
0:55.8	and making a lot of money.
0:58.4	I roommate just told me that he'd gone out near tomorrow and he asked me about he had any
1:03.2	friends that wanna make some money and you the first B-tch I thought of.
1:08.5	When we leave him, be ready by two.
1:13.1	But the road trip turned into something much bigger and darker and scarier.
1:19.6	Your list needs to it's been a minute from NPR.
1:21.4	I'm Sam Sanders and today on the show, we talk about Zola with one of its stars, Riley
	...

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