Drake, Jermaine Dupri tell Magic City’s story in stripped-down series
During a reception in the lobby of AMC Madison Yards theater, following a private screening of “Magic City: An American Fantasy,” a diverse crowd of well-connected Atlantans greeted one another to celebrate Atlanta’s most famous and influential strip club.
Music entertainers 2 Chainz, Jermaine Dupri and Killer Mike mixed with Atlanta Hawks owner Tony Ressler, CNN’s Sanjay Gupta, and dozens of Magic City dancers, some of whom, as the documentary’s creator Cole Brown told the crowd before the screening began, would likely perform later that evening at the club.
Guests posed for photos and enjoyed a catered Magic City Kitchen buffet that included the adult lounge’s equally famous lemon pepper wings and fresh house salad. They also shared their initial thoughts after previewing the first two episodes of the five-part series, which debuts Friday on Starz television network.
A former Magic City dancer once known as “India,” dressed in a sparkling mint-green fringe dress, said she recently retired from stage and lap dancing to pursue a career in the music industry. She spoke fondly of her experience as a nude entertainer performing for tips in the downtown Atlanta gentlemen’s club.
“Magic City has put me in a position to level up and level out,” she said. “See now, (when) the documentary comes out, I might renew my license, come in there for a little week or two before I move down to Florida, just for fun. But Magic City is a place you don’t stay forever. You make so much, and they give you so much opportunity that you can do whatever you want.”
Indeed, the mighty adult nightclub at 241 Forsyth St. SW, with its cityscape facade and seductive logo above the entrance, has become a defiant symbol of Atlanta’s unique relationships with culture, power, survival and success.
This is, after all, Magic City.
It’s a strip club where generations of customers might have seen Michael Jordan, Dominique Wilkins, Shaquille O’Neal (who says in the documentary he was inside the building when he signed his $100 milllion NBA deal), Drake and many other celebrities. It’s where Atlanta United took the MLS trophy when the soccer team won the championship.
It’s where some of the biggest records in hip-hop were first played to measure their impact with listeners — specifically women. And it has been such an accepted part of Atlanta’s identity that residents and visitors are more likely to be seen with suspicion for refusing to visit the club than for enjoying the show from its plush seating near the stage. It’s not just another strip club; Magic City is an icon and an Atlanta institition.
Through five half-hour episodes, the documentary aims to capture that by bringing Magic City’s history to the screen. The story is told through a timeline of interconnected interviews, animations and vignettes from the club’s founding family, its celebrity patrons, a few outside observers and some of its greatest talent.
One of the ways in which “Magic City: An American Fantasy” establishes credibility with viewers is by its treatment of women. The series, made by director Charles Todd, with creator Brown,Dupri, Jami Gertz and Drake serving as executive producers, seems aware of who really made the show happen and why their voices matter.
Some of the club’s first dancers, including Sonya Meadows, who used the stage name “Platinum” in the early 1990s, appear throughout the series. Now in her late 50s, her boisterous energy and personality shine particularly bright in the second episode.
Platinum recalls when Deion Sanders offered to pay her, with an expensive watch, to fight a dancer nicknamed “Strawberry,” a friend of Platinum’s whom Sanders disliked for constantly joking about his appearance. (To be fair, he was often overloaded with gold necklaces and a wet Jheri curl hairstyle, particularly during his Atlanta years.)
In the same episode, “Strawberry” shares darker realities of exotic dancing, such as attending a funeral for Magic City dancers found killed decades ago after working a night shift. The episode, titled “Whoomp! There it is,” manages to fit the story of how hip-hop group Tag Team broke the massive hit record from the club’s DJ booth, but also shows how the women who moved to the music found ways to forge sisterhood despite being constantly exposed to threats of violence.
In an interview with UATL, Gertz spoke of what her experience as an executive producer taught her. She was introduced to Michael “Magic” Barney and his family when she and her husband, Ressler, first arrived in Atlanta as owners of the Hawks. The opportunity to be part of the documentary came through her son Nick, who’d gone to college with Brown and shared his classmate’s idea with his mother.
“I came on board to finance and to produce, and I learned so much more, you know, about the heart and hustle of Atlanta,” Gertz said. “It was just an extraordinary story, and so I knew if I was this interested that there would be an audience for it.”
Asked if her career as an actress influenced the documentary’s handling of the dancers’ stories, Gertz said it was something everyone involved wanted.
“This club is nothing without the beautiful women of Magic City. What I was so blown away by is that the past dancers wanted to speak about their journey, about what it meant to them to dance there. The current dancers that are dancing there love being there, and want to talk about their journeys. And, you know, everyone’s history, we all bring our past into our present, right?”
Viral content creator and educator Lynae Vanee, who also attended the screening, said that while many people might normally change the channel on a women-led TV story, she believes “Magic City” will captivate audiences.
“The doc is so masterfully crafted and well done — which is important for telling women’s stories,” Vanee said.
The eroticism is definitely on display in the documentary, which doesn’t shy away from nudity. Director Todd said his approach to showing naked bodies just as they are seen in the club was based on balancing honesty and elegance, while avoiding gratuitous skin exposure.
“I think nudity has a purpose and a place in this storytelling, but there’s no need to just show nudity for the sake of it, right? That doesn’t serve our story at all,” Todd said.
He said the producers and showrunners frequently had off-camera conversations with dancers to understand their comfort and boundaries on-camera.
“Would you prefer a female cinematographer versus a male cinematographer? A female producer doing the interviews versus a male producer leading the interviews,” he said he asked the dancers. “That’s how you establish trust, and that’s how you create a safe space where people feel comfortable to be themselves and to express themselves in a way that makes sense for them.”
With additional commentary from journalist Aliya S. King, Georgia Tech professor Joycelyn Wilson and dancer “White Chocolate” — whose posterior served as a faux credit card reader in rapper Nelly’s infamous “Tip Drill” music video — the female voice in the documentary are wide-ranging.
Perhaps the most interesting woman telling her experience was Gail Barney, the former wife of founder Michael Barney. While married to the man known as “Mr. Magic,” she shares how her personal life became tangled with the club’s drama, from how she learned her then-husband had opened the club almost 40 years ago without her knowledge, to being ambushed by federal agents on an airplane when he was arrested and later convicted for conspiracy to distribute cocaine.
Following the screening, Gail Barney said she and her ex-husband remain friends, and showed support for the documentary’s approach to reality.
“It’s got pros and cons to this business and how it affects the family,” she said, speaking of her personal affiliation with the club and dancers. “Any woman that wants to live this life, they have to consider the effect that it has on the whole family, and they have to be able to release.”
Intertwined with tales of hustle, crime, business, pleasure, drama, celebrity, entertainment and lots of money, it’s a series that’s sure to spark conversation and the kind of reflection “India” hopes will result from the documentary’s release.
“I hope a lot of the stigma dies down a little bit. We have a lot of people emulating the life of a stripper; they don’t understand what comes with being a dancer, the way people disrespect you and treat you in real life. But when they come in the club, they show you love,” she said.
“We get up there, we get naked, we dance and do what we need to do. And I feel like strippers are a big inspiration to the culture.”
IF YOU WATCH
“Magic City: An American Fantasy” premieres Friday at 10 p.m. on Starz. Remaining episodes will air weekly on Fridays at 9 p.m.
About the Author
Mike Jordan is senior editor at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Black culture brand, UATL. A longtime culture journalist, his work has been published in The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, National Geographic, Rolling Stone and others. Jordan won the James Beard Foundation’s 2024 Jonathan Gold Local Voice Award and was a 2023 finalist.
